Frank Sinatra’s heartbreaking final words
It’s fair to say Frank Sinatra did it his way. Yes, it’s fair to say that Frank Sinatra – Rat Pack leader and Hollywood hunk – did it his way. And he declined the lead role in Die Hard, not because of outside pressures, but because he wanted to decline it his way. He was, he told the creative team behind the film that he was too old and too wealthy to engage in an action film, so the producers cast this rugged hot-shot called Bruce Willis. What became of him?
So, Sinatra lived his life his way, and by the sounds of things, he died his way, too. Having suffered a heart attack in 1997, Sinatra was the subject of yellow paper gossip as scribes, poets and hacks ruminated on the demise of the once-great singer. Sinatra’s wife, Barbara, gave an interview with Las Vegas Sun in April 1998, stating that her husband was determined to keep his privacy but was otherwise fit and healthy. A month after the interview, Frank Sinatra died.
At the time of his death, Sinatra was joined by manager Tony Oppedisano, who bade him farewell to the other side. “His two doctors and a number of technicians were surrounding him when I walked in,” Oppedisano told the Mirror. “I sat by him and held his hand, trying to keep him calm. Then his wife Barbara arrived and told him to fight. He struggled to speak because of his breathing.”
The singer looked at the company and gave his final words. “He just looked up at the two of us and said curtly: ‘I’m losing’”. And in a move that was strikingly similar to George Harrison’s death in 2001, the singer embraced the end with strength and purpose, understanding the importance of the end. In many ways, it stands as the ultimate moment.
“He wasn’t panicked,” Oppedisano said. “He was just resigned to the fact that he had given it his best but he wasn’t going to come through. I told him I loved him but those were the last words I ever heard him say before he passed away.”
Sinatra died, floating off into the ether, leaving behind a legacy that will likely outlive me, you, and the children we are likely to produce. Sinatra appeared in Blade Runner 2049, albeit as a hologram, creating a sense of finality that Officer K (Ryan Gosling) was undergoing.
Officer K watches the hologram, peering over the clip of a deceased singer who entertains a replicant awaiting certain doom. Gosling offers a detached performance, as he contemplates the banality of life as he listens to a singer who braved his journey to the great beyond with the professionalism and dignity he awarded his songcraft.
Death is a fundamental stage of life and one that is neither to be feared nor revered but faced with the certainty of a person awaiting the end of their time on this earth. When we await that moment, we should enjoy the moment, understanding that everything we have done, everywhere we have gone, and everyone we have loved has brought us to this tremendous moment of enlightenment.
Sinatra’s presence in Blade Runner 2049 only adds to what might be the greatest cinematic sequel since The Godfather Part II. And much like the great Francis Ford Coppola opus, Blade Runner 2049 is a film based on romance, rhetoric, rigour and verve, spinning a tale of yearning, upheaval and death. And while the films may hint at an afterlife, they understand, like Sinatra understood, that losing is fine, as long as it’s done with a certain amount of dignity.