Now, two months after he told me he wanted to go to Salt Cay, I was back in Alabama. My dad greeted me warmly, pointed at his watch to let me know that he was aware I was fifteen minutes late. "I had to divert for some buildups around Cross City," I explained.
We picked up our oyster loaves and once again were out on the pier eating lunch together. He sat at the very end of the dock on the crabbing pier and tossed sticks to the dogs, who gallivanted into the shallow water to retrieve them. They swam back to the pier, shook the water from their fur, and dropped the sticks at our feet, waiting for the next toss. After several more throws, they sensed a change in mood and swam off toward the beach, leaving my father and me alone.
"It's getting worse, Jim," he said flatly. "It's the scariest thing I have ever been through in my life." I didn't know what to say. I was in tears but couldn't speak. Saying I was sorry just didn't feel like enough. My dad sensed this immediately and changed the topic. "You know why I chose to fly instead of go the the sea?"
There it was, the question that had been nagging at me all these years. Now, on the end of the pier near the end of his lucid days, I was going to get the answer. "Why?" I asked.
"Because it was what I wasn't supposed to do. Looks like you have made a career out of that, doing what you're not supposed to do. I'm proud of you, boy"
Buffett, J. (1998). A Pirate Looks at Fifty. New York: Random House. Link.