I looked at my shoes. They were worn leather, splattered with blue paint. There was a hole over my left toe. I regretted not putting on a fresh pair.

My father whispered. “Promettimi . . .”

My mother had said the same. “Promise me you’ll take care of your father.”

I replied to him the same way I’d replied to her. “Anything.”

“Promise me you’ll never give up the paint.”

“But I want to go with you.” I resented that my voice cracked like a boy’s.

“You must stay, Rafa, stay and become the greatest painter in the world. The greatest painter in history.”

“Giovanni,” Evangelista da Pian di Meleto—my father’s most trusted assistant, tall and stout as a bell tower—said from the opposite side of the bed. “The boy doesn’t need that now.”

“Anything less, my son, will be a disappointment to God. And to me.”

“Your father’s delirious,” a priest whispered.

“Time for childhood is over.” My father’s eyes fluttered. “Promettimi.”

I’d failed my mother’s promise: I hadn’t taken good enough care of my father. I wouldn’t fail this one. I replied, “I promise.”

“See,” he said to Evangelista. “I told you this wouldn’t destroy him.” He turned back to me. “So, my son, you have plenty of work to do. For I’ve given you a job, so you must do it. There will be no time for grief. You will have to work hard, but never with sadness or anger. God has given you life, so you must embrace it. Beauty springs from joy. If you remember that, you’ll keep your promise to me. And keep your promise you must.”

I wish death were like an altarpiece, contained in a single scene, don’t you? Instead, it’s panel after panel after panel . . . If I could repaint the moment of death, here’s what I’d choose: a father limp in bed, hand open and empty, nuns raising arms in prayer, and a boy—off to the side—crouching at the foot of an old cabinet to pick up off the floor a long-handled, long-bristled paintbrush. That’s how death should come. Shouldn’t it?