This is my father, John Wise Sr., on September 23, 2000, after having his left leg amputated; the right had been taken off somewhere before 1995. Before they’d take his leg, they needed to bring his blood sugar down, which, from what I understood, was estimated to be somewhere in the 600’s. For a minute, he was a calm and focused man, relieved even that the pain of a rotting leg might disappear. But of course, the nerve damage brought on by raging diabetes was going to play its role in tormenting him for unrelenting belligerence my father knew how to own. For the next couple of years, he’d be in and out of hospitals. Dad is 56 years old in this photo. He was born on March 16, 1944, in Buffalo, New York.

Fast forward to June 2002 and my father is a shadow of the man I knew him as. He’s now 58, which will also be the end of his birthdays. By this time, he’d slipped into a diabetic coma and nearly died, but as he didn’t have a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order, he was kept alive. When he came to he’d lost a good chunk of his memory and lost the ability to understand what came after the number 5, both value or conceptually. When he learned of our visit, he felt he needed to clean up and had his wife Diana give him a haircut, and he shaved so he could look nice for us. In his last year of life, he’d finally mellowed and stopped with the anger and fatalism; he was actually kind of sweet. No matter his mood or pain, he was mostly happy to see us, though he always complained that it was never enough.

Today, February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry after 16 days in space, with all those aboard losing their lives. My father, age 58, also gave up his life today.