65 years ago

My parents said their "I do's" surrounded by family and friends. Theirs was an enduring love story, one I got to witness up close, so I know the truth of it. My dad died 18 years ago, and my mom, still missing him as nakedly as the day he stopped breathing, sits in her chair in my brother's house in Kingston, looking out at the hills, her body frail, her thoughts roaming through memories.

Above, my parents as newlyweds in 1949 in front of their first home in Spanish Town, Jamaica. Below, my new favorite photo of my parents, taken on Christmas Day 1994, the day after my daughter walked for the first time. My mother was 72 and my father 71. He was already sick with a relapse of the cancer that would take his life just 14 months later, but we didn't know it yet.

That charmed Christmas in St. Lucia, so perfect in recollection, was the last time I saw my dad walking. He was in pain, but bearing up for the rest of us. I remember as I waved to him when we were leaving—knowing finally how badly he was feeling because for the first time ever he didn't make the trip to the airport with us—I suspected we had crossed a watershed. Such gloomy thoughts. Here is a happier one: I feel like the most blessed child on this earth to have had these two as my parents.