Two weeks before Joe and I were to marry on the rooftop of a chocolate factory in downtown St. Louis, we learned my dad had angiosarcoma. We heard words like “cancer.” “One in a million.” “Extremely aggressive.” His doctor warned us not to Google it.

A year earlier, I stood before a silver-framed mirror in a bridal shop sinking my fingers into the soft silk of a wedding dress. I called my dad on FaceTime. “Really, really incredible,” he said, tears in his eyes, “just incredible.” His booming laugh echoed off the walls.

Three days after I said, “yes to the dress,” I woke at midnight to the sinister glow of my iPhone. I learned my dad had been shot point-blank in the jaw during an attempted carjacking. The months that followed were agonizing. Joe cared for my mom as she slept night after night at the hospital, and he comforted me as I wept, afraid, unsure, and heartbroken.

The day my dad was released from the hospital, Joe was there to drive him home. They spent their nights jamming together: Joe on guitar, and my dad pounding piano keys like nothing ever tried to stop him.

My dad, the survivor.

We planned our wedding with newfound vigor. Just like I was there to walk arm-in-arm with my dad as he took his first, unbalanced steps down those monotonous hospital hallways, my dad would walk me down the aisle.

But cancer was a cruel, twisted irony. Six days before my dad was supposed to walk me down the aisle to “Here Comes the Sun,” I curled beside him in his hospital bed. We watched Yesterday. He had to pause it halfway through. Sleep was swallowing him.

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