On a day when a double rainbow kissed an ashen sky over the outfield wall, when the sunshine refused to leave Fenway Park, and the raindrops dared not enter, I saw my last Red Sox-Yankees game. My daughter surprised me with the tickets, using a fifth grade ruse which sucked me in completely.

It wasn’t entirely a happy affair. Two walks and a hit batsman set the Yankees up for a go-ahead grand slam, in what would eventually become a sweep of the crucial late season series. It looked like doomsday for the Red Sox post season, but it wasn’t. Everything is relative.

I say it was my last time at this storied rivalry, because I am on the very southerly side of life. Don’t feel sorry for me, I have few regrets, and have been blessed in many ways. Since the diagnosis, I have lived it up a little bit, and there is more living to do, I promise you.

I have had a surgeon who rid my body of the scourge three times, only to see the insidious cells pop up somewhere else. My oncologist is a source of unparalleled strength. He tells Dad jokes to keep it light, but is very serious about finding and getting to me every medicine that might help, even when insurance won’t pay. I have had medical staff, nurses, and office staff that showed me kindness every step of the way.

Fourteen years ago, I washed ashore here, never dreaming I would be accepted by the Island community, folded up in it, and made to feel like I did a little bit of good out here in the middle of the ocean. I found a pub that kept me fed and sated, and friends to cherish forever. I found solace in the Vineyard’s tenuous infrastructure, including, at a critical time, the Martha’s Vineyard Cancer Support Group. My employers cut me a wide swath of slack when I could no longer reliably wrestle sentences out of a computer keyboard. For all these things, I am grateful beyond words.

My boat Snappy Lede was my home in Vineyard Haven harbor for eight summers. With me was Joe the Cat, best first mate I ever had. Dozens of gorgeous boats surrounded me. It was a short leg to the start line of the Vineyard Cup and the Moffett Race. Countless sunrises, countless sunsets. Infinite stars. I learned how to photograph the vast night sky, and the tiny bluebirds on an oak tree in front of my little cabin. Belonging to a community that turns out half the town to watch a boat launch was a consummate joy. I interviewed senators and congressmen, and followed POTUS around in a big yellow bus. In my years here I heard more good live music than in all the rest of my life. I have learned there is way more good than evil in this world.

Nothing about the illness was so difficult as making the decision to move off the Island. So I didn’t. Still not quite sure how it happened without leaving drag marks in the Steamship Authority parking lot.

It was, I suspect, a somewhat spontaneous conspiracy. Reluctantly, I was persuaded by my family that with increasingly limited mobility and a tendency to fall down, it was unsafe to stay alone any longer. That was the crack in the wall. No doubt in fear of my stubbornness, they devised a circuitous strategy. They knew they couldn’t target me directly, so they kidnapped my stuff. All of it.

They were vacationing on the Island. Without my express consent, and without, for the most part, me being there to protest, they gathered up the detritus of my residency on the Rock, and packed it in my truck. By some miracle I still don’t understand, they managed to secure an unanticipated ferry reservation for the truck. My existence here was fairly spartan, but this was all still a big job.

So it was, we came to be sitting in the boat line one sultry July evening, waiting to load on and drive to my daughter’s home in Manchester-by-the-Sea, north of Boston.

It was then that the enormity and symbolism of leaving the Vineyard, probably for the last time, hit me like a rogue wave crashing on Norton Point. A rogue wave of sorts was crashing in my stomach. Another threatened to crash down my cheeks.

Only one element of the conspiracy was yet to be put in place. The boat reservation did not include a passenger ticket for me. I got out of the car and trudged toward the ticket office, thinking maybe the purchase of my only one-way ticket in 14 years would bring some closure, and stop the rogue waves. It didn’t.

Approaching the terminal, I realized I forgot my mask, so I turned around and trudged back through the dark lot to the car.

I asked my daughter to go back and buy the one-way ticket.

I just couldn’t do it.

Steve Myrick is former senior writer for the Gazette.