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DEAR DAD

Out of all the letters I’ve written, this is the hardest, because you are my father but also my best friend. Yeah, you’re not perfect, and you fuck up a lot—A LOT—and you’re still pretending to be deaf when I know you can hear me, but I fucking love you and will always be Daddy’s little girl.

My childhood may have been very different and backward, but I consider myself lucky. Some people have real piece-of-shit parents, but I don’t. Sure, you both have flaws, but I’ve never doubted how much you love me. It’s amazing how much you can get through with love.

Norman Rockwell is one of my favorite artists, and when we were growing up, Mum had a coffee table book of his paintings and owned several of his pieces (which are now hanging on Jack’s wall, much to my annoyance). I used to sit there and stare at the book, slowly turning the pages and taking in every image—happy people gathered around a turkey dinner or fathers reading to their children. The one thing I knew about Rockwell was that he painted “perfect” families. Wow, I would think, if that’s what a family is supposed to look like, we’re nothing like that.

Through all the years that you were an active addict, Dad, almost any family outing, event, or celebration ended in shit, even though I sometimes didn’t even realize it was bad. At one of my birthday parties, you rounded us all up in the garden shed to play Three Little Pigs. When it came time to shout “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down,” you popped out the door wearing the werewolf mask from your Bark at the Moon music video and album cover. Every kid started screaming and crying their eyes out. They were all so inconsolable they got sent home, while I was sitting there thinking it was hilarious and wondering what had happened to my party.

For many years, Dad, you made my life a living hell. Even as a child, I never questioned your addiction or the god complexes that came along with your career as a rock star. I just saw what was in front of me and figured I had to find a way to love you as you were, because you were the only father I was ever going to get.

You and Mum never lied to us about your addictions. You always told us what drugs were and what you were going through. The way you explained it was that your heart and soul were saying no, but your body and brain were saying yes. The body and brain were telling you that without drugs, you would die, so they almost always won.

When there is an active addict in the family, everyone chooses to deal with it differently. Some people choose to face things head-on, which is fucking hard, if not impossible; others decide to just never be around or create their own delusions. I chose to create my own delusions, because, Dad, you were my hero.

Aimee was always with Mum, and Jack was running around with his friends, so often it was just me and you. I don’t know if the role was given to me, or if I took it on myself, but I became the one in our family who took care of everybody else. When it came to you, my default was to clean up your messes. Sometimes, that was literal, as I’d be on my hands and knees with a rag, wiping up puke before anyone else saw it. Other times, it was more spiritual, as I’d tried to gloss things over by saying, “Oh, that never happened,” or would figure out a way to distract everyone so they’d shine the light on me and spend less time looking in the shadows.

•   •   •

Dad, you are a rare breed of human being who, no matter what you do, will somehow always manage to get away with it. There’s something so fucking innocent about you, even though your behavior is devilish. You have a special kind of charm that also takes a lot of bravery and a massive ego, and you are one of the best liars in the world.

The only people you have never lied to are your fans, and they are the only ones who bring out your humble side. I’ll never forget a show at Voodoo Fest in New Orleans, when it was pouring rain. The field was still packed, even though the fans were soaked to the skin and getting wetter by the minute. The stage was protected, so you could have easily performed the entire set and only gotten hit with a few droplets. Instead, you walked onstage with your hands in a yogi prayer position, bowing to the crowd over and over again before taking a couple of buckets of water and pouring them over your head to show the audience that you were right there with them. You may have bitten off the head of a bat, Dad, but you would never, ever bite the hand that feeds you.

No matter what mistakes you have made in your personal life and in your role as my father, there is no way I could have anything but respect for the fact that you are almost seventy years old at the time of this writing and still selling out seventy-thousand-plus-seat arenas and running around the stage for two and a half hours a night. I would challenge anyone to find a nineteen-year-old who puts on a better show than you, Dad.

The media has crafted an image of you where you’re a bumbling, deaf fool who never knows what’s going on, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Playing dumb is part of your act. I know this, so I would never fuck with you because people have no idea how smart you are.

You remember absolutely everything when it comes to me. More than once you have repeated to me something that I said, verbatim, six months before, when you were in a different room and I didn’t even know you were listening. Hard of hearing, my ass.

Dad, if someone is lucky enough to have you love them—and there are very few people you love, outside of our family—you will love them forever. You are very old-school, in that when a woman walks into the room, whether she’s nineteen or ninety, you stand up to give her your seat, and you have always seen yourself as the provider in the family.

Dad, when you are sober, I cannot find a better person on earth, or someone with a bigger heart. It makes me very happy that my nieces could possibly go their whole lives without ever knowing you as a using addict, and they will remember you only as the loving, caring person you truly are. They adore you, especially Pearl, and the feeling is mutual.

For a long time, I always thought I was more like my mother, but, ironically, it’s only been recently that I have started to see how much I am truly you—but with a vagina and minus the sex addiction. I got your sense of mischievousness, where I will always want to push buttons just to see how far I can go, and I even look like you. I have the same eyes, same jaw, and even your legs! I can read you better than anyone else in the family, and know what you want before you even ask for it.

We each have the same morning routine, where we’ll get up, put on our workout clothes, then waffle around for an hour while we put off actually going to the gym. We were once traveling together and I put on some music. “Are you listening to Abbey Road?” you asked. I said yes, and that I listened to the whole album every day.

“So do I,” you said.

It had been so long since we’d lived together, I had no idea.

I’m the only one in the family who goes to hang out with you, just to sit and watch crap TV and talk about nothing. You never cease to surprise me with what you know, asking me if something you read in a gossip mag is actually true. I’m just sitting there thinking, When the fuck did you get a copy of Us Weekly? And then take the time to read it? Or I’ll walk into the kitchen and find you singing Demi Lovato’s “Cool for the Summer.”

“Dad, do you even know who sings this song?” I’ll ask.

“No, but I like it. It’s shitty pop music.”

“Shitty pop music” is how you classify everything you think someone with the nickname “The Prince of Darkness” shouldn’t like. It always cracks me up. You’re the same way with my dog, Polly—you don’t want to like her, because she’s cute and you think you should only like things that are scary, but I’ve seen you cuddle her and I know you love her!

As much as you have put me through, Dad, I know you will always protect me. You hate when I wear anything low-cut, and you have your assistants stalk me on social media. If there’s something you don’t like on my Instagram, you don’t even know what it is and will tell me what you saw “on your Internet.” “I don’t have an Internet, Dad,” I’ll tell you. “It’s the Internet.” We’ve had this same conversation dozens of times.

Your bandmates are my extended family, and I have watched them grow up just as they have watched me. Over the decades, I’ve seen the backstage turn from a circus of groupies and substances to cheese plates and fruit trays and whispers because Geezer’s taking a pre-show nap. I’ve never loved the holidays—probably because no one knows how to ruin a good time like you, Dad—but when I’m backstage at Black Sabbath or one of your shows, I imagine I feel like normal people do on Christmas morning. Surrounded by a multigenerational, tight-knit group of people I love, some of whom have known me since the day I was born. It might not be Norman Rockwell, but it’s as close as I’m going to get. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I love you, Dad.

Love,

Kelly O