When my father died in June 2022, I was in my car, driving from my home in Pennsylvania to where he lived in Georgia to be with him. The day before, I had received a call from my dad’s nursing home administrator to tell me he was in his final days. I wasn’t very far into the drive when my cellphone rang again, and I learned that my father had just died.
I continued down to Georgia. During those 10-plus hours in the car, I called my family. I called my daughter to tell her that her grandfather had passed away.
I called my cousin in Puerto Rico, the son of my father’s older brother, so that he could tell my uncle that his younger brother was no longer with us. What I remember most about those first few hours is something that surprises me even now: I was at peace. I felt like I had done everything I could to take care of my father.
Whatever tensions or difficulties we had experienced in our relationship had been dealt with long before he died. There wasn't anything I needed to tell him, and I didn’t have regrets about our relationship. Four years after my father's passing, I still wish I had taken him home to Puerto Rico.
My father lived most of his life in Loiza, a coastal town near San Juan. His little house sat just behind his older brother’s home and probably wasn't more than 500 square feet. It was made of concrete, the walls were painted white, and the floors were unfinished without tile.
He slept in a full-size bed and wasn’t someone who really cared much about material things—I remember buying him his first cordless home phone many years before. He would sit on his little porch with metal bars, and because his older brother lived so close, the two of them would spend time talking there. Every once in a while, my father would go to a hole-in-the-wall bar and have a beer or two with neighborhood friends.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
