Final January

     The last time I saw my father alive was the night of January 19th.  He and I were in the living room, the house in its strange silence.  Everybody else  had gone to bed.  Five  other people lived in the house at that time, but the night isolated each from the other.  My father was sitting in his usual chair by the window, reading as he did every night of his life.  His unlikely companion, a miniature pinscher named Susie, was, also as usual, snuggled next to him in the chair.  His literary  interest was primarily non-fiction.  He read the papers, doing the daily  crossword and word jumble. He read "True Magazine" and the "Saturday Evening Post,"  which carried the only work of fiction I ever recall his reading, some series which I seem to remember featured a character called Tugboat Annie.  I  never read those stories, so don't know why they appealed to him.  Maybe someday I'll look them up. 
     I was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the living room stove, correcting papers from the high school English classes I was teaching.  In front of the stove because the night was cold, and sitting cross-legged because I was 27 years old and didn't have to think about it.  I can't remember if we talked about anything.  I think he was pleased that I'd gone back to teaching, maybe even proud, but we didn't acknowledge those things.  I know he went upstairs first, but probably not long before I did.  I don't remember if we said good night.
    Some hours later, in the early morning of January 20th, I woke to my mother's voice calling up the back stairway.  She had heard Susie barking, had gone downstairs and found my father. He was gone.