MY father did not come to England to live with us. He came to die with us. What I didn’t understand was the honour: in the midnight of his life he wanted to be with his daughter who lived 3,000 miles away. He left behind his home, his books and his beloved dog. He arrived with a grim diagnosis and a single suitcase, which contained an envelope stuffed with insurance papers, his birth certificate, the journal he wrote in the 1960s, his Second World War dog tag and the letters I’d written home over three nomadic decades.
He also brought me a small book called I’m not sure I opened it in his lifetime, which turned out to be barely a month. He died in his sleep, a departure as full of grace as his life. In the drawer of the nightstand by his bed, I placed the meagre possessions he had arrived with: Social Security card, driving licence, glasses, watch, American Express card, passport—the prosaic of modern life. I slid the book into a shelf full of early Penguin paperbacks.