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Every weekend for as long as I can remember, my father would get up on a Saturday,
在我能夠記住的每個周末，我的父親在周六起床后，
put on a worn sweatshirt and he'd scrape away at the squeaky old wheel of a house that we lived in.
會穿上一件舊T恤衫，他會刮掉我們所住的老房子的油漆。
I wouldn't even call it restoration; it was a ritual, catharsis.
我不能把它叫做修整，那是一種儀式，一種凈化。
He would spend all year scraping paint with this old heat gun and a spackle knife,
他會用整整一年的時間來用他的熱風槍以及抹墻粉刀來刮掉油漆，
and then he would repaint where he scraped, only to begin again the following year.
然后他會重新油漆他刮掉的部分，這只是為了能在來年重新開始。
Scraping and re-scraping, painting and repainting: the work of an old house is never meant to be done.
刮漆和再次刮漆，油漆和再次油漆，這所老房子的工作永遠不會結束。
The day my father turned 52, I got a phone call.
當我父親52歲的時候，我接到一通電話，
My mother was on the line to tell me that doctors had found a lump in his stomach
我母親在線上告訴我說醫生在他的腹腔發現一個腫塊兒，
terminal cancer, she told me, and he had been given only three weeks to live.
癌癥晚期，她這么跟我說，他只能活三周。
I immediately moved home to Poughkeepsie, New York,
我立即搬家到紐約Poughkeepsie，
to sit with my father on death watch, not knowing what the next days would bring us.
為我父親臨終看護，不知道第二天我們會發生些什么。
To keep myself distracted, I rolled up my sleeves,
為了讓自己分散注意力，我卷起了袖子，
and I went about finishing what he could now no longer complete -- the restoration of our old home.
我去做他再也無法完成的事情--修整我們的老房子。
When that looming three-week deadline came and then went, he was still alive.
當那個無形的三周期限來到了又過去后，他還是活著。
And at three months, he joined me. We gutted and repainted the interior.
三個月后，他開始跟我一起，我們重新粉刷了內部。
At six months, the old windows were refinished, and at 18 months, the rotted porch was finally replaced.
六個月后，老窗戶完成了，18個月的時候，破敗的陽臺也翻新了。
