Two years ago, I got a phone call from my dad, Scott Durkee, while I was sitting at my desk in my Brooklyn apartment.

He just learned that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. After a few months of back pain and other seemingly-mild ailments that didn’t respond to massage therapy, acupuncture, changes in his diet, and similar methods of treatment, he had his blood tested and they found the cancer.

About a week after getting that call, I was packing up my car for what my friends later called my “car race across the country.” Three days after driving through the Lincoln tunnel in lower Manhattan, I drove off the ferry and onto the island. His next nine months were well documented in my dad’s own voice and published in The Beachcomber in commentaries you can still find online.

I spent those nine months establishing a bi-coastal lifestyle, spending as much time as I could with him on Vashon, while making semi-regular trips back to Brooklyn.

The time since his death in October 2023 has been tumultuous, full of grief and personal and logistical challenges, and more bicoastal travel. It took a long time to get things settled with his estate, but late last year, my partner, Julie, and I packed up our essentials and flew with our kitty cat from New York back to Seattle. I’m finally living on the property I grew up on, in the house I helped build during the pandemic.

Taking responsibility for this property has come with plenty of its own challenges. It’s rewarding to roll up my sleeves and work on a house I now own — but painful, too. My dad is everywhere in this house, his half-chaotic, half-disciplined thinking visible in every room. Sometimes I laugh out loud just to mask my frustration.

It’s an odd experience living in someone else’s house that you helped build.

And while I’m no longer bi-coastal, I don’t know how long we’ll be here. In addition to inheriting a house, I also inherited a debt, one that can’t be paid off on my nonprofit salary alone.

But for however long I own this little piece of Maury Island, I’m grateful for the chance to get to live life a little more like my dad did, see the world the way he did, and get a little closer to him.

Jeevon Durkee is an island resident and the communications manager of Murmuration, a New York-based public education-focused data analytics and technology nonprofit.

Jeevon Durkee works on his dad’s Maury Island home. (Courtesy photo)