Earlier in the day, I received a call that my father had been admitted to the hospital. My wife Kim and I immediately left our Las Vegas vacation to the Bay Area to see him. We traveled from the land of bright lights, escapism, and magic back to a hard reality.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/IMG_2167.with-father.jpg\")
<\/a>Rajiv with his father, Anand Shah, in 1998<\/p><\/div>\n
In a strange way, I felt the universe had called me back home as if the city of Las Vegas was trying to alert me that something was wrong. I had been thinking of my father non-stop since we had arrived. My wife\u2019s choice of a surprise trip to Las Vegas and her decision to book tickets to David Copperfield\u2019s magic show, \u201cLive the Impossible,\u201d at the MGM Grand kicked up my earliest memories with my father.<\/p>\n
<\/a>(Clockwise from top left) Rajiv with his sister Analisa and friend outside of David Copperfield’s show in 1994. (Rajiv wanted a photo with the master magician and this is as close as they could get. ) Rajiv performing. 1996. Rajiv visits David Copperfield’s star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.\u00a0 Rajiv pictured in 1995 with his sister performing in “Beyond Illusion.”<\/p><\/div>\n
As a kid growing up in the 90s, I used to do magic. I was a professional teenage magician doing shows in the small town where I grew up. My father routinely took me to Las Vegas to watch the magic of Lance Burton, Siegfried & Roy, and my all-time favorite, David Copperfield. He encouraged me to watch the masters, telling me that if I wanted to be great, I had to learn from the best.<\/p>\n
So every day I returned from school, I would pop an old VHS tape into our VCR that would play David Copperfield\u2019s special, \u201c15 Years of Magic.\u201d I rehearsed my routines, moving my hands in the same fluid and easy way as David Copperfield; my fingers curled seductively around coins, took them into my palm, and then unfurled to create the illusion of something tangible suddenly dissolved into the ether.<\/p>\n
I even had a David Copperfield outfit in my closet to perform in, his trademark look: a classic white buttoned-down shirt opened just below mid-chest with a black T-shirt underneath. Both were tucked snugly into tight, black jeans, with the white fabric spilling out over my belt like the wings of a dove.<\/p>\n
Copperfield seemed not of this world. When he strutted onto the stage, David Copperfield was the king of magic, playing to thousands in packed arenas, an elegant rockstar who could take flight any moment. I idolized David Copperfield, and like so many other aspiring magicians, I wanted to be just like him. My biggest wish as a boy was to be a part of one of Copperfield\u2019s shows.<\/p>\n
Doing magic opened a whole new world for me, where I could learn something unexpected about myself. I was an uncool, gangly teen who, at fourteen, sported a thick mustache (a comic look that my father encouraged me to keep; in his opinion, it gave me the airs of a \u201cyoung Valentino\u201d though, in reality, it was furry and gave me the appearance of someone who was perpetually sweating).<\/p>\n
<\/a>Rajiv with the cast of “Beyond Illusion” in 1995<\/p><\/div>\n
Being the eldest son of immigrant parents, I struggled to fit in. However, whenever I performed magic, I felt safe. In school, magic was a social armor that redirected the bullying from my classmates into surprised astonishment. Magic was my world, and inspired by David Copperfield\u2019, I felt anything was possible.<\/p>\n
At home, my father and I fought about everything. He was an engineer and a highly analytical man. His career entailed assessing risk, and he brought that assessment into the home. My father loved repeating his company motto, \u201cOnly the paranoid survive.\u201d I\u2019d retort, \u201cYou\u2019re paranoid. Somehow, we survive.\u201d<\/p>\n
But on really bad days, my father returned from work exhausted and angry. He demanded to see my homework. I dreaded these days. I would sit in fear as he\u2019d go on tirades about the inadequacies I displayed on my math and science assignments. He worked himself into a frenzy.<\/p>\n
The criticisms about me eventually turned inward and revealed his own fears: of being fired from his job and of our family losing our home. After intense fights, I\u2019d pop my VHS tape into the VCR and lose myself in Copperfield\u2019s world. My father would eventually re-emerge from his room, sit quietly nearby, and watch.<\/p>\n
David Copperfield was known for his massive feats of illusion: he made the Statue of Liberty disappear, walked through the Great Wall of China, and he created the illusion of flying. However, seeing Copperfield take my father\u2019s fear and watching it dissolve during his performances was the real magic.<\/p>\n
What my father and I loved most weren\u2019t Copperfield\u2019s grand illusions but the smaller, more intimate routines that told his personal stories. Copperfield masterfully weaved memories about his own family into his illusions. My father and I shared a love for one trick in particular. In it, Copperfield told the story of seeing snow for the first time as a boy.<\/p>\n
Copperfield would create a snowstorm in the theater, and in the middle of it, he turned himself into a young boy experiencing the magic of the falling snow. The boy walked the stage, arms outstretched and head upturned as he twirled in the moonlight. Behind him, Copperfield reappeared in the shadow as a grown man. When the boy noticed him, they circled the stage like the hands of a clock moving apart in opposite directions.<\/p>\n
<\/a>1994 publicity shot of Rajiv for “Beyond Illusion.”<\/p><\/div>\n
When I was fifteen, I mustered the courage to tell my father I wanted to perform on stage in my own solo magic show. I was deathly afraid that my father would crush my dream of performing. Instead, he asked me to audition for him. A few days later, in our tiny living room, I performed the show I titled \u201cBeyond Illusion.\u201d I made friends appear from empty cardboard boxes, made doves disappear into the air, and closed the show by gleefully levitating my sister, much to my mother\u2019s chagrin.<\/p>\n
Afterward, I stood silently as my father looked over me and took in what he had just seen. I apologized for keeping it a secret, how I perfected my routines when he wasn\u2019t home, or how I had made my own props and hid them in our garage. I thought my dreams were over, and he must have felt the show was terrible or was angry that I hid my intentions from him.<\/p>\n
I was ready for another of his fearful tirades. Instead, he told me he wanted to help me make the show. My father, the man I had written off as incapable of anything daring, is the very person who rented out a 500-seat theater and promoted the show in the local papers. His actions led to a sold-out run. Friends and strangers had come from all over to see the spectacle of a teenage magician who looked like a mini David Copperfield with a thick caterpillar mustache.<\/p>\n
As the years passed, I left behind my magical aspirations and locked away the illusions, the colorful contraptions, and my treasured VHS tapes of David Copperfield\u2019s TV specials. Like so many childhood dreams that dissipate with time, I never got the chance to be a part of one of Copperfield\u2019s shows. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, I had gone from an awkward fourteen-year-old magician looking for acceptance to a forty-three-year-old man raising his own family.<\/p>\n
During that period, my father and I had also drifted apart from what had become the conflict of two different lives. His paranoia had gotten stronger with age and tethered him deeper to his fear while I sought to live life unafraid and on my own terms. My father struggled with health problems. He was in and out of the hospital, but years of misunderstanding made me reluctant to reach out to him.<\/p>\n
In the fall of 2023, my wife wanted to lift my spirits, so she surprised me with an impromptu trip to Las Vegas. She had booked a show for us, one she thought might bring back memories: David Copperfield\u2019s LIVE THE IMPOSSIBLE at the MGM Grand Hotel. It had been decades since I had seen one of Copperfield\u2019s tricks, and though my desire for magic had since long passed, I loved her for the gesture.<\/p>\n
On the night of the show, we went to the MGM Grand\u2019s theater. It was an intimate space with low lighting, a small array of brown leather, and four-top booths on beige and white carpeting. Above the audience\u2019s heads were square boxes in a circle that one might find in a sci-fi movie. Kim had secured seats in the middle row of a space that sat 700 or so- and on this particular night, a house that was maybe three-quarters full.<\/p>\n
When Copperfield walked onstage, he wore the warm, trademark smile that had made him famous. Copperfield spoke of dreams and of making the impossible possible. He no longer wore the black motorcycle boots or tight black-fitting jeans that he\u2019d tuck half-buttoned downed shirts into; instead, he wore an untucked, loose-fitting baby blue shirt that looked a size too big for him. His pants draped loosely around his waist, and he seemed stockier and shorter than I\u2019d remembered. The spectacle was still there, but I missed his personal magic.<\/p>\n
Then, midway through the show, Copperfield told a story about being on the road during the height of his fame. He spoke of the distance that had put a wedge between him and his father. His dad repeatedly asked him to come home, but Copperfield was too busy. His father finally passed away while he was on tour. He missed the final moment to be with him. Copperfield shared that he longed to have that one moment back with his father- to say goodbye and \u2018I love you.\u2019 He hoped to do that now through his magic.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, there was the old David Copperfield that I had loved so much, the showman who created real magic through his storytelling. I thought of my father and understood Copperfield\u2019s message: to grasp this moment before it\u2019s gone entirely.<\/p>\n
<\/a>(Left to right) 2023. Rajiv calling up his magic roots with a balloon gifted to them by David Copperfield. October 2023, Rajiv and Kimberly Ocampo-Shah at David Copperfield’s show “Live the Impossible” at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Rajiv and Kim were chosen by Copperfield as volunteers and were gifted the balloon used in the trick they participated in.<\/p><\/div>\n
Copperfield walked down from the stage with a couple of balloons in hand. He moved to our table, handed the balloons to Kim, and asked her to inspect them. While she did, he reached into the popcorn on our table, tossed a couple of pieces into his mouth, and winked.<\/p>\n
Cameras hovered nearby and projected us onto huge screens around the stage. David then placed one empty balloon in the other, blew them up, and placed them into a sealed plastic box. He waved his hand, and the small balloon inside the bigger one magically burst without Copperfield touching either of them. He gave the balloons to Kim, instructed us to look into the camera and wave. Kim and I beamed as the audience erupted. Fate finally delivered my wish to be in one of David Copperfield\u2019s shows. And for the briefest of moments, I was a kid again.<\/p>\n
In the morning, I received news of my father\u2019s health. Kim and I caught the first flight home. I went to see my father in the hospital. I stopped in the doorway when I saw the long tubes running into his arms; the machine beeped as it pumped oxygen into his lungs.<\/p>\n
I sat beside his bed, and we spoke very little at first, both of us trying to find the words. I asked him how he was feeling. My father apologized that we had to cut our trip short. I told my father about David Copperfield\u2019s show and how seeing his magic had made me think of him. I shared that Copperfield had performed a trick right at our table and how he\u2019d included us in his act.<\/p>\n
A small smile broke across my father\u2019s cracked lips. \u201cYou finally got what you wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThirty years later,\u201d I shook my head.<\/p>\n
\u201cShow me that trick,\u201d he said, \u201cthe one about the snow.\u201d<\/p>\n
I nodded, pulled out my phone, and loaded the video online. I pressed play.<\/p>\n
Copperfield\u2019s voice cut the silence, \u201cI got one last thing I\u2019d like to show you. I hope you like it; I hope it works…\u201d<\/p>\n
My father and I watched the magic unfold, as we had done many times before. Snow enveloped Copperfield\u2019s theater and then seemed to drift off the screen and into our darkened hospital room.<\/p>\n
The boy onscreen was me, and the man was my father.<\/p>\n
I tilted my head upwards, but instead of snow, I saw my father lying on his bed. His eyes spoke of a quiet stillness that had not been there before.<\/p>\n
My father lifted his hand and put it on mine. I could feel the bones in his fingers, long and thin as he curled them and unfurled them, as if he were trying to conjure magic of his own.<\/p>\n
And perhaps he was\u2026<\/p>\n
A final act preparing me for his disappearance.<\/p>\n
Snow encased us, falling and passing between, forever binding man and boy together at that moment\u2026 an ailing father beside a son who had been gone for far too long.<\/p>\n