It was somewhere in the midnight hours between the last night
of my father’s dwindling life and the day he died. I was sitting outside on a
bench at the Towne Centre, listening to live music trailing through the doors
of a building that had been an integral part of our childhood celebrations-
birthdays, soccer parties, a haven for safe, teenage fun.
Hours earlier, we had determined that my dad’s body was
giving us the signs. He was ready to go. We switched him from Palliative Care
to Hospice, identical in care except for the remote hopefulness that the former
held onto. Hospice was a word we had waited with uncertainty to hear. What
would it mean? What would it be like? How long would it last? The word came
with the understanding that no further sustenance would be offered to keep my
dad’s body alive, only the humane grace
that medicine could provide. So, now it became a waiting game, with no clear
winner.
We made a collective decision that the next day would be a
celebration of all the things my dad loved. But that night, that last night of
my father’s life, I had a strong compulsion to fly. I had to be young. I had to
be free. To dance and stay up too late and thumb my nose at the stuffy sorrow
of it all.
The restaurant of our childhood had become a concert lounge,
still a haven to the same generation of crazy 80’s teenagers, only a few
decades older. The music raging from the stage was a playlist of favorites from
our era. As we listened to songs that marked our youthful existence, waves of euphoric,
unapologetic defiance crashed into waves of suffocating grief.
I wandered outside to escape the sensory overload and found
myself in front of an old familiar fountain, my friends next to me. In the confusion
of sorrow and tears, someone (I don’t even remember who, it could have been me)
suggested we throw pennies into the fountain and make a wish. We dug out three
pennies and I heard two splashes. My eyes were closed, fingers clutching the
penny, waiting for my wish to materialize. It was at that moment, as I realized
I had no idea what to wish for, that the song started. A song I had heard a
million times since I was a teenager, possibly in that very spot, but had never
really HEARD before.
Sweet Child of Mine.
What is the statistical probability that a song could be
written decades prior, somehow played as if on cue, and then have such
significant lyrics that never made sense until that moment? I couldn’t begin to
tell you, but as they belted out the most existential question known to man, I
knew my dad was with me. He was scared. He was genuinely asking me.
Where do we go? Where do we go now?
They sang and I sobbed. I kissed the penny, told my dad I
loved him, and threw it in the fountain. Splash.
That one moment in time would have been enough. But my Jazzy
MD of a dad was never one for understatement. In the months, and now years to
come, I would hear the live version of this song, played from the beginning as
I walked past the doorway of a bar on a busy street. Sung by a cover band when I took my mom away
for a Mother’s Day weekend and had been soaking in the significance of our time
together. On the radio at precisely the same moment, in precisely the same spot
of Victoria Avenue where I had heard it before. And so many other times, when I
truly needed it, that I have lost count.
My dad died that Sunday, June 26th, after a night
of escaping the confines of his convalescence with his daughter, and a full day
of being celebrated and surrounded by his entire family. Where do we go now? I wouldn’t
profess to know the answer. Heck, I’m not even sure of where we ARE anymore! But
any fears or doubts I might have had before that night have been put to rest.
It doesn’t matter. And my guess is, it is closer than we think. My dad may not
be here in the form that we knew him before, but he repeatedly proves to me in showy,
over the top ways that he most certainly is still here.
