The empty house never seemed emptier. For the longest time I couldn’t relax and went from room to room, from couch to chair. Finally, in the empty kitchen I sat down across from my father’s gray sweater and allowed my thoughts to drift to his accident. I imagined him behind the steering wheel the moment he swerved the Chrysler into the tree. I visualized the violence of the impact, the shattered glass on the visor, my father gasping, choking on his dentures. Then I saw my father butt-naked, smoking in the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning, sitting exactly where I was sitting now. It couldn’t be. But it was. My father was gone.
I stood up and stumbled to the closet to find something I could wear for the funeral. My father’s starched shirts hung painfully in the half-dark. I swallowed
