The wrecking ball first took a swing at my dad about fifteen years ago, maybe twenty. Time blurs.<\/p>\n
He’d gone in for a routine angioplasty one winter morning and was prescribed the customary post-op blood thinners to aid his circulation. The doctors told him to take it easy, but my dad never met a doctor whose orders he’d follow. He went outside to fetch the paper on a brittle morning, lost his balance on the ice, fell to the ground and didn’t get up.<\/p>\n
The blood thinners caused internal bleeding in his brain, and he was rushed unconscious to the hospital. He was unresponsive for days, his head swollen. Family and friends gathered around his bedside and said tearful goodbyes.<\/p>\n
Except he didn’t die.<\/p>\n
Slowly, he fought his way back to consciousness. When he came to, his memory was spotty and his thought process fractured. We feared he’d suffered some form of brain damage. His fine motor control was shot, and we didn’t think he’d walk again.<\/p>\n
But he was alive.<\/p>\n
The wrecking ball had taken its best shot, and he was still standing… metaphorically. Soon enough, he was standing literally. With time and mulish determination, he regained his memory and his wits (mostly) and was able to get around with a walker. Despite our best efforts to ground him, he was soon back behind the wheel, too.<\/p>\n
The wrecking ball came for him again some years later. His kidneys were failing and dialysis was in his future. Against everyone’s better judgment and entreaty, he decided to try to get in one last vacation. He ended up in the hospital somewhere in Florida, where the doctors worked to save his life and my brother and I flew down, unsure of whether this would be our true goodbye.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t, although my parents would end up living at that hospital for about a month before my dad was stable enough to transport home to Pennsylvania. We were furious at him for his foolhardiness and the scare and disruption he lobbed into our life like a grenade.<\/p>\n
Before long, he’d be on dialysis several days a week. Even then, he refused to ease his lifestyle. He’d get in car accidents because he shouldn’t have been driving. He’d fall trying to get into his car and lie on the ground in the summer heat until someone stumbled across him and helped. More times than I can recall, he ended up in some southern hospital with congestive heart failure. His cruises and trips to Myrtle Beach were dice rolls every time, and he wasn’t a very good gambler.<\/p>\n
Over the last two decades of his life, the wrecking ball swung again and again–almost always, it seemed, on a dare: Let me see what you got<\/em>.<\/p>\n He ignored doctors’ orders; he defied his limitations.\u00a0Bring on your wrecking ball<\/em>.<\/p>\n I can’t remember how many times we said our final goodbyes. Far too many, and not nearly enough. Over time, we became inured to it. We rolled our eyes and joked about our father the cat. Nine lives was just scratching the surface. Death wasn’t strong enough to claim him.<\/p>\n Last July, he called me at 5am my time and greeted me with, “I think I have cancer.” He said it that bluntly and matter-of-factly, and before my brain could even process it, he proceeded to tell me the plans for the belated wedding reception he’d planned for my daughter, who married a year earlier during the pandemic without our extended family present.<\/p>\n A few weeks later, his biopsy results confirmed that he did indeed have late stage cancer. He scheduled his chemo treatments to start on August 4th, and on August 1st we gathered to celebrate my daughter and son-in-law and their on-the-way baby.<\/p>\n My dad had to be physically lifted into and out of his car that night, but he still managed to work the room using his walker. (Bring on your wrecking ball!<\/em>) He gave a speech–he loved giving speeches–told corny dad jokes, and basked in the warmth of his family and friends.<\/p>\n It was the last time he ever stood on his own.<\/p>\n Two days later, my brother and I took him for his first chemotherapy appointment, and I’ll never forget the way the doctor paled when he entered the room. My dad had deteriorated too quickly in just two weeks, the doctor said, and chemo was no longer a viable option. We checked him into the hospital emergency room instead.<\/p>\n After examining him, the doctors told him he had only weeks left, maybe a couple of months, but knowing my dad I was sure he’d make it to greet his first great-grandchild that autumn.<\/p>\n He was gone eight days later.<\/p>\n When told he would spend his remaining days in increasingly excruciating pain and in hours-long dialysis, he decided to spare himself and his family. He chose to stop dialysis, knowing that meant he’d only have a day or two in which to pack the rest of his living before drifting off to a painless, endless sleep.<\/p>\n We transferred him immediately to a nearby hospice, where his family and friends came to be with him. It was a scene we’d played out before, but this time we all knew it wasn’t a dress rehearsal. He used every remaining waking hour to its fullest, sharing stories I’d never heard, scarfing down ice cream, and telling everyone who came to see him just how much they meant to him.<\/p>\n My sister was the last to say goodbye–he hung on to consciousness long enough for her to make it back from a cut-short vacation, and his last words were to her. After that, he issued one more silent\u00a0Bring on your wrecking ball! <\/em>This time, though, it wasn’t a dare. It was an invitation.<\/p>\n He died a year ago today. On his own terms, during the night.<\/p>\n One of the best things about art is that no two people perceive and receive it the same way. That’s especially true about music.<\/p>\n To some, “Wrecking Ball” is a song about a decrepit stadium scheduled for demolition; to its songwriter, it’s a metaphor for “the flat destruction of some fundamental American values and ideas that occurred over the past thirty years” (as he put it in a 2012 press conference).<\/p>\n To me, it’s about my dad.<\/p>\n