THE FATHER AND THE SUNSET
Throughout the years, my father kept on living an orderly and disciplined life. He had honorable, steady work as an engineer. He stayed in shape. He hiked and climbed mountains. He ate well and avoided sweets. He drank very little alcohol. He didn’t smoke cigarettes (before I was born, he gave up all his vices in one day, and that was it). Alfred Roy was not a man of indulgences. That’s why, when I received the news that he had become ill while I was recording Charmbracelet in Capri, I was shocked. My strong, invincible father? It was like a blow to the head, quick, sharp, and disorienting. My father called and suggested I come. Not to save him, or finance his care—he didn’t need or ask for that; he had always earned and saved his own money. What he needed from me was closeness and closure.
But I’m glad we talked through
All them grown folk things separation brings
You never let me know it
You never let it show because you loved me and obviously
There’s so much more left to say
If you were with me today face to face
—“Bye Bye”
I immediately flew to see him at the hospital where he was being treated for abdominal pain related to cancer. I remember that, on that first trip, he still looked like that strong, vibrant, ageless man I knew. But that changed rapidly. Cancer can be a swift bandit, stealing life right out of your body before you even know it has broken in.
After several misdiagnoses, it was concluded that he had bile-duct cancer, a rare form, with no known preventive or curative measures. This cancer grows in the tubes that carry digestive fluid and connect the liver to the gallbladder. It was more than symbolic to me: a healthy man develops a cancer that poisons the part of his body that absorbs and washes away waste. My father held so much inside and had little opportunity to flush out all the bitterness he’d consumed. Now he was in and out of the hospital, and so began my traveling back and forth from recording in Capri to staying at my frail and fading father’s bedside in New York.
Strange to feel that proud, strong man
Grip tightly to my hand
Hard to see the life inside
Wane as the days went by
Trying to preserve each word
He murmured in my ear
Watching part of my life disappear
—“Sunflowers for Alfred Roy”
When I visited my father, I would bring massive bouquets of flowers with me to the hospital (any room in any hospital is the epitome of bleak). Yet, as his condition worsened, he developed an intolerance for the fragrance of most flowers. It was hard to fathom that the beauty I thought I was bringing him was making him sicker. On Father’s Day the year before, while Shawn and I were driving to his house, on a whim I had stopped at a farmer’s market and grabbed a big bunch of bright-yellow sunflowers wrapped in paper to bring him. I was still unable to break the habit of coming to the hospital with flowers, so I brought sunflowers. I figured they couldn’t make him sick, because they have no scent, but they have a strong presence. Sunflowers are our symbol.
Quickly, his cancer treatment became ineffective. It was clear there was nothing to be done to stop the toxic disease wreaking havoc in his body. It was almost his time. We knew our time together on this earth was limited, so my father and I got down to the business of talking things through. His sickness made our healing urgent. This was the first time I revealed to him (or any family member) my struggles growing up.
“When I was little,” I explained, “it was really hard for me, because white people made me feel ashamed to be what I was. The hate I felt from some of them was so real. I didn’t have the tools, I didn’t have the skill set to know how to handle that. And I don’t ever want you to feel like it was because of you.”
I tried to explain how alone I felt, trying to handle such a complex situation without guidance. When I was getting ready to start kindergarten, my parents told me I should just say I was “interracial” (that was the word back then, there was no “biracial” or mixed-ish). But it wasn’t nearly that simple, especially when we were living in white neighborhoods. It would have been much less complicated if we had continued living in Brooklyn Heights, where there was at least some diversity and more progressive ways of thinking. I would not have stood out nearly as much. The kids in the neighborhoods I lived in didn’t even know what “interracial” meant. They only knew they were white, and that not being white was other—and Black was the worst kind of other there was.
I tried to explain to my father that, growing up, I didn’t have a sibling or a squad to back me up. Nobody ever gave me the compulsory Black instruction, “If anyone calls you a nigger, punch ’em in the face.” So when I was cornered and called “nigger” by a group of my “friends,”
