Sharon, can you hear me?

this house gets real empty sometimes.

i wrote the following letter to Sharon Osbourne at 4 am after rearranging my hospital room.

Dear Mrs. Sharon Osbourne,

My name is Carlee Hill and I live in Tucson, Arizona. I’m 23 years old and today I am 23 weeks pregnant for the first time. These last couple of months I’ve been pretty lazy, feet up around the house compulsively watching your show “The Osbournes” on dvd. What a treat to shut off the censorship bleeping device!!

Your family often reminds me of my own. My mother (Sharon Hill!), sister and I found surprising comfort in the similarities between Ozzy’s charming befuddlement in the world with what we experienced with my dad. Also a musician through the 60’s and 70’s he indulged in much of the same lifestyle Ozzy barely remembers enjoying. When your show originally aired my dad was home with us on disability and watching it offered a lighter-hearted look at living with a dynamic, creative, loved one who was completely baffled by a remote. Well, Dad passed away at home of a heart attack at age 56 in 2003 and though our hearts still feel robbed sometimes, we are glad he is free of every burden.

So there is some history of you and yours unknowingly helping me and mine. Now I sit here in the Oncology wing at Northwest Medical Center having just received my first round of chemotherapy. I came in this time last week to have a large mass that sprung up on my neck overnight, surgically removed. Well that dirty fucker had weaseled his way around everything in my neck; nerves, windpipe, voice box, spine, etc. My surgeon and his team got it all out thus preserving my ability to breathe and eat but it turned out to be lymphoma, luckily highly treatable Hodgkin’s Disease. Thankfully and almost unbelievably the cocktail of chemo they use to treat that has been used safely in pregnant women for years! I truly have a genius team of doctors and my son Max swims safe and oblivious inside me, growing everyday and darting away from fetal heart monitors. They say he is a fighter, I say he’s not doing anything at all, the lazy bum.

But the reason I’m writing to you about all this is I had a season 2 marathon of “The Osbournes” with my sister to have a laugh while I waited to enter the hospital last week. Sharon, you really are one tough bitch. If chemo never got your wicked tongue, sharp wit or fierce heart than I’ll be okay. I’ve only just begun this cancer journey and motherhood itself is just on the horizon; knowing just how big a job they both are I’m so proud of you and I admire you. I’ve always thought of you as a true original, a most delightful merry prankster and a monstrously devoted wife and mother. Thank you for sharing a glimpse of your life with the world. You don’t know how you’ve helped me keep my chin up. To lighten a grim hospital room I’ll often think of something shocking maybe you would say to get the doctors and my beautiful mom to blush or laugh. It always works.

Thank you,


she has never written back. i really only wanted a Black Sabbath onesie.

my mom is at the ranch with my stepdad in willcox. Max will be running around with them someday learning how to ride and rope and whistle and play guitar and build campfires. real cowboys sit with their back to the fire so their eyes stay alert in the dark. this year i am learning how to pray ceaselessly. i saw my chest xrays yesterday. i looked real skinny! i still have cancer.

this scabby scar on my neck was born on december 4th. i was supposed to be playing a one-man band fest that night as the Tambourines. i've lost at least a third of my voice and can see on the xray that my windpipe is still shoved to the side by tumors in my chest. breathing gets easier all the time in lots of ways for lots of reasons but i still don't know when to schedule a reunion show.

i feel like an off-key one-armed go-go dancer. lila commented i have a raspy tamborine heart. it's stupid but i miss my mom. it's not stupid.

i can't remember how not to miss my dad. it's like praying ceaselessly.