A year before my father died, shortly before I was to return to England, where I was living in my 20's, he and I sat on my parents' deck in Marion, Massachusetts, overlooking the harbor bathed in a late summer light. There, my dad, looking remarkably well for someone whose prostate cancer had metastasized into his bones, told me everything a child wants to hear from their parent—that he loved me and was proud of me. These were things I knew, but had never heard him say so directly, with such deliberateness. A few months later a letter arrived to me in England in which he expanded on his feelings about me. And though I would see him again, it proved to be his goodbye.