‘My dream was his dream’: Canucks’ Brock Boeser turns focus to hockey after a year of pain and loss
Michael Russo
Sep 12, 2022

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Even in those final days in hospice care, when Duke Boeser couldn’t eat, couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, could barely breathe and was in so much pain he took a swing at his son when he tried to help sit him up, Brock Boeser figured this would be the latest adversity his strong, courageous father would overcome.

After all, since Brock was 13, anything and everything was launched in his dad’s direction, and Duke always, always, always triumphed in the end.

In 2010, Duke was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. In 2012, his car was T-boned when another car ran a red light a half mile from his Burnsville, Minn., home. Duke’s seatbelt snapped, and he was thrown into the passenger-side door, suffering a traumatic brain injury, several broken bones and a lacerated spleen. In 2017, Duke was diagnosed with lung cancer, something he’d beat before cancer returned and he’d have to fight some more. In 2019, Duke had a pulmonary embolism that caused his heart to stop and turned him blue.

Yet, after 15 minutes of chest compressions, Duke was brought back to life. They’d lose Duke’s pulse again in the ICU, but once more he was revived. He ended up hospitalized for months, spending parts of it with a feeding tube directly into his stomach and a breathing tube directly into his windpipe.

“I remember when he got cancer for the second time, I was with him in the car,” Brock Boeser, 25, says as he sips his iced coffee and plays with a yellow band around his right wrist that reads “Never Stop Fighting” on one side and “Dukey Strong” on the other. “He cried and said, ‘Why does this keep happening to me?’ He could never catch a break. That’s something that’s hard not to think about. Why did he have to go through so much? No one knows, and that’s in God’s hands.”

Yet, after that second cancer diagnosis, after being deemed clinically dead after that blood clot traveled to his heart, Duke always lived on.

For three more seasons Duke got to watch his son score goals for the Vancouver Canucks, so Brock wondered why this time, as dementia and Parkinson’s overtook his dad’s mind and body, would be any different.

That was until Thursday, May 26, the day before his dad died at the age of 61.

Brock was alone in his parents’ bedroom with his dad. Duke was sleeping, his breathing strained.

Brock put on some music. Tim McGraw’s “My Old Friend” came out of the speakers. It was a song he always listened to with his dad while growing up.

Brock turned up the volume, then sat on the chair next to his dad’s bed.

My old friend, this song’s for you
‘Cause a few simple verses was the least that I could do
To tell the world that you were here
‘Cause the love and the laughter
Will live on long after
All of the sadness and the tears
We’ll meet again
My old friend … goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye

“My dad squeezed my hand and kind of smirked at me,” Brock says. “He just kept squeezing my hand as the song played.”

“Yeah,” he continues, his voice shaking, “he knew it was time to go. You wanted to just stop time because I knew that he knew it was time to say goodbye.

“During the tough days and nights over the last few months, my dad squeezing my hand is something special I keep thinking about.”

The next morning, when Brock’s mom, Laurie, went into the bedroom to change the clothes of her husband of just shy of 28 years, she heard his final breath.

Brock woke up the morning of May 27 to his mom’s call that his father had passed away.

“I went over there right away,” Brock says. “I know a lot of people get this feeling when they see people go through so much pain and suffering and then they die and they look so at peace, but while I was sad, I had the weirdest feeling through my body.

“I looked at my dad, and he’s finally not in pain anymore.”