The true story behind the track “Angel on your Shoulder”
At 3am, on one very cold November night... the unexpected happened.
As Gioia was driving home from work, he began to doze off and lost control of his car. As the car began to swerve from one lane to the next, Gioia panicked and slammed on the brakes causing the car to spin out of control and flip over seven times. Gioia was critically injured, suffering from broken ribs, a chipped vertebra, a bruised heart and bleeding lungs but because he didn't’t suffer any head trauma, he remained completely coherent for the whole ordeal. What occurred next, with his life now on the line is extraordinary. “It was a surreal experience but I was aware and able to remember everything”, Gioia recalls. “Once the car finished rolling, I was laying on the inside of my upside down car, on its roof. I was all alone. No other cars had pulled over; no other cars were even driving by. The pain in my back was excruciating. I remember the first thing I did when the car stopped rolling was wiggle my fingers and toes just to make sure I wasn't paralyzed, which I wasn't. I was so thankful for that. I then tried to crawl out of the car but I was in waaaay too much pain. Still, I was determined to get out of the car because I felt so strongly that if I stayed in that car I was going to die. So again, I tried to crawl out of the car but I just couldn’t physically do it. Frustrated, I slammed my hand down and screamed. At that moment, as if to answer my frustration, I heard a soothing woman’s voice say to me, ‘Everything’s going to be alright, help is on the way’. I immediately looked around but no one was there. No woman, no other car…..I screamed back, ‘Someone’s got to get me out of this fucking car right now!’ I listened but there was no response. Again, no one was there with me, I was all alone. So I said to myself, ‘Alright then, I guess I’ll just have to wait it out’, and I stopped struggling to get out of the car. I just put my head down, and trusted what was said to me. About five minutes later, an ambulance pulled up to my car. I was relieved to finally see somebody… anybody. The EMT’s talked to me for a few moments before discussing among themselves how to safely remove me from my crushed car. After a few minutes they decided they couldn’t wait any longer. The exact quote from one of them to the other was, ‘He looks like shit! We’ve got to get him out of there right now!’ So they slide a backboard through the broken rear window, reached in through the broken glass, flipped me onto the backboard and pulled me out of the car. I was very lucky but as it turned out, even luckier than I could imagine. In the ambulance they told me that no one had called them, they just happened to be driving by my accident on their way to the hospital with a another sick person. Luck struck again as the hospital was only a few miles away because, unknown to all of us at the time, my lungs were bleeding and I only had about 20 minutes left to get treatment or I would have died from the fluid buildup in my lungs. Once I got to the hospital, they examine me and told me they were going to tranquilize me. I said to the nurse with great relief ‘Thank you!’ because I was still in so much pain and I was totally done with it. At that point I remember thinking to myself I was home free and would be better by the morning…”
But for Gioia and his family, this ordeal was far from over.
Gioia spent the next 3 days on life support surrounded by his loved ones, clinging to his life, fighting to overcome not only the traumatic injuries from his car accident but also a life threatening 106 degree fever which developed from a bad cold he had caught days before the accident. Gioia continues, “Over the next 3 days, the doctors informed my family several times that they believed I was not going to survive the night. The internal injuries alone were serious enough to kill me but once my fever spiked to 106 degrees, they thought that would be the final nail in my coffin... As the doctors treated me around the clock, it was hell for my entire family as my loved ones watched my heart monitor, praying it wouldn't stop. The doctors, my family, me... we all battled and luckily, I pulled through. I don’t have any memories of being on life support other than when the morphine had prematurely worn off. I started gagging on the breathing tube and I instinctively ripped it out of my mouth. I did that twice. Other than that, being on life support is all a blank, no heavenly voices like I heard at the crash site or outer body experiences. Just blackness until the morphine was turned off and I woke up 3 days later. Funny, when I returned to consciousness I thought it was just the next morning after the crash. What a surprise when they told me I nearly died! I wish the nurse had told me I was on my death bed. I would have liked to have spoken to my loved ones before they put me out. Who knew?!”
As for the woman’s voice Gioia heard, he firmly contends it was a feminine spiritual presence. “I wouldn’t go as far as saying I am convinced it was the voice of God but it certainly was not of this world or my imagination. Its soothing presence gave me great comfort and strength, leaving me filled with a feeling of peace and love. It inspired me to fight on and it absolutely left me with a feeling that we are not alone.” (The EMT’s that rescued Gioia did confirm that he was alone when they arrived at the crash site and also that no 911 call was received by them about the crash.)
The next three months for Gioia was a time of painful recovery. Gioia rejected all of the pain meds he was prescribed claiming, “I didn’t want to take a chance of addiction. Plus, I was so happy to have survived in one piece. After what I had just experienced, I was just grateful for another day, any day, regardless of the pains”. During the recovery period, Gioia wrote the lyrics and melody for “Angel on your Shoulder”, inspired by his recent spiritual and life changing event.
From that point on, music would again be Gioia’s greatest passion.
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