In 2007, my father was dying in Bridgetown, Barbados from intestinal cancer. Dying in Barbados was long a part of his plan; though he lived in Poughkeepsie, NY, my father wanted to be somewhere beautiful in the company of my mother and his closest friends.

After an arduous plane ride from New York City, with the oxygen tank on the seat next to him, my father asked, “Can I finally let go?”

“That’s why we are here,” my mother answered. “To let go.” 

They each might have had different ideas about what that question meant to them, and what its answer truly signaled. He was asking her permission to die. He was 55 years old.

Letting go, for my father, meant arriving back to one of the few places he had vacationed over the last few years, the home of one his closest friends. He settled into a familiar, comfortable chair, the one that was upholstered green and white with a soft, low saddle. It was well used, and its springs sunk deep.

On the second night of his stay, Dad called my cell phone. He rarely did that. I was in the middle of my finals week of the spring semester of my first year at graduate school studying architecture. I was running between class and dinner, but I answered. 

“Hey, are you having fun?” I said, in denial of the truth that he was dying. “I’ll see you after my final, when you get back.” 

“I love you, Michael,” he replied weakly. “I am proud of you.” 

Then my phone’s battery died before I could respond, and I had to run home to........

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