Here? Smack in front of the picture window? 2 страница

out to the edge of the gravel lot, where I stared

into the growing blackness. Standing out there in

the dark, I felt many different things. One of them

was pride in my fellow Americans, ordinary peo-

ple who rose to the moment, knowing it was their

last. One was humility, for I was alive and un-

touched by the horrors of that day, free to con-

tinue my happy life as a husband and father and

writer. In the lonely blackness, I could almost

taste the finiteness of life and thus its precious-

ness. We take it for granted, but it is fragile, pre-

carious, uncertain, able to cease at any instant

without notice. I was reminded of what should be

obvious but too often is not, that each day, each

hour and minute, is worth cherishing.

I felt something else, as well—an amazement at

John Grogan

the boundless capacity of the human heart, at

once big enough to absorb a tragedy of this mag-

nitude yet still find room for the little moments of

personal pain and heartache that are part of any

life. In my case, one of those little moments was

my failing dog. With a tinge of shame, I realized

that even amid the colossus of human heartbreak

that was Flight 93, I could still feel the sharp pang

of the loss I knew was coming.

Marley was living on borrowed time; that much

was clear. Another health crisis could come any

day, and when it did, I would not fight the in-

evitable. Any invasive medical procedure at this

stage in his life would be cruel, something Jenny

and I would be doing more for our sake than his.

We loved that crazy old dog, loved him despite

everything—or perhaps because of everything.

But I could see now the time was near for us to let

him go. I got back in the car and returned to my

hotel room.

The next morning, my column filed, I called home

from the hotel. Jenny said, “I just want you to

know that Marley really misses you.”

“Marley?” I asked. “How about the rest of you?”

“Of course we miss you, dingo,” she said. “But

Marley & Me

I mean Marley really, really misses you. He’s driv-

ing us all bonkers.”

The night before, unable to find me, Marley had

paced and sniffed the entire house over and over,

she said, poking through every room, looking be-

hind doors and in closets. He struggled to get up-

stairs and, not finding me there, came back down

and began his search all over again. “He was really

out of sorts,” she said.

He even braved the steep descent into the base-

ment, where, until the slippery wooden stairs put

it off-limits to him, Marley had happily kept me

company for long hours in my workshop, snoozing

at my feet as I built things, the sawdust floating

down and covering his fur like a soft snowfall.

Once down there, he couldn’t get back up the

stairs, and he stood yipping and whining until

Jenny and the kids came to his rescue, holding him

beneath the shoulders and hips and boosting him

up step by step.

At bedtime, instead of sleeping beside our bed

as he normally did, Marley camped out on the

landing at the top of the stairs where he could

keep watch on all the bedrooms and the front door

directly at the bottom of the stairs in case I either

(1) came out of hiding; or (2) arrived home during

the night, on the chance I had snuck out without

John Grogan

telling him. That’s where he was the next morning

when Jenny went downstairs to make breakfast. A

couple of hours passed before it dawned on her

that Marley still had not shown his face, which was

highly unusual; he almost always was the first one

down the steps each morning, charging ahead of

us and banging his tail against the front door to go

out. She found him sleeping soundly on the floor

tight against my side of the bed. Then she saw

why. When she had gotten up, she had inadver-

tently pushed her pillows—she sleeps with three

of them—over to my side of the bed, beneath the

covers, forming a large lump where I usually slept.

With his Mr. Magoo eyesight, Marley could be

forgiven for mistaking a pile of feathers for his

master. “He absolutely thought you were in

there,” she said. “I could just tell he did. He was

convinced you were sleeping in!”

We laughed together on the phone, and then

Jenny said, “You’ve got to give him points for loy-

alty.” That I did. Devotion had always come easily

to our dog.

I had been back from Shanksville for only a week

when the crisis we knew could come at any time

arrived. I was in the bedroom getting dressed for

work when I heard a terrible clatter followed by

Marley & Me

Conor’s scream: “Help! Marley fell down the

stairs!” I came running and found him in a heap at

the bottom of the long staircase, struggling to get

to his feet. Jenny and I raced to him and ran our

hands over his body, gently squeezing his limbs,

pressing his ribs, massaging his spine. Nothing

seemed to be broken. With a groan, Marley made

it to his feet, shook off, and walked away without

so much as a limp. Conor had witnessed the fall.

He said Marley had started down the stairs but,

after just two steps, realized everyone was still up-

stairs and attempted an about-face. As he tried to

turn around, his hips dropped out from beneath

him and he tumbled in a free fall down the entire

length of the stairs.

“Wow, was he lucky,” I said. “A fall like that

could have killed him.”

“I can’t believe he didn’t get hurt,” Jenny said.

“He’s like a cat with nine lives.”

But he had gotten hurt. Within minutes he was

stiffening up, and by the time I arrived home from

work that night, Marley was completely incapaci-

tated, unable to move. He seemed to be sore

everywhere, as though he had been worked over

by thugs. What really had him laid up, though,

was his front left leg; he was unable to put any

weight at all on it. I could squeeze it without him

yelping, and I suspected he had pulled a tendon.

John Grogan

When he saw me, he tried to struggle to his feet to

greet me, but it was no use. His left front paw was

useless, and with his weak back legs, he just had

no power to do anything. Marley was down to one

good limb, lousy odds for any four-legged beast.

He finally made it up and tried to hop on three

paws to get to me, but his back legs caved in and

he collapsed back to the floor. Jenny gave him an

aspirin and held a bag of ice to his front leg. Mar-

ley, playful even under duress, kept trying to eat

the ice cubes.

By ten-thirty that night, he was no better, and

he hadn’t been outside to empty his bladder since

one o’clock that afternoon. He had been holding

his urine for nearly ten hours. I had no idea how to

get him outside and back in again so he could re-

lieve himself. Straddling him and clasping my

hands beneath his chest, I lifted him to his feet.

Together we waddled our way to the front door,

with me holding him up as he hopped along. But

out on the porch stoop he froze. A steady rain was

falling, and the porch steps, his nemesis, loomed

slick and wet before him. He looked unnerved.

“Come on,” I said. “Just a quick pee and we’ll go

right back inside.” He would have no part of it. I

wished I could have persuaded him to just go right

on the porch and be done with it, but there was no

teaching this old dog that new trick. He hopped

Marley & Me

back inside and stared morosely up at me as if

apologizing for what he knew was coming. “We’ll

try again later,” I said. As if hearing his cue, he

half squatted on his three remaining legs and

emptied his full bladder on the foyer floor, a pud-

dle spreading out around him. It was the first time

since he was a tiny puppy that Marley had uri-

nated in the house.

The next morning Marley was better, though

still hobbling about like an invalid. We got him

outside, where he urinated and defecated without

a problem. On the count of three, Jenny and I to-

gether lifted him up the porch stairs to get him

back inside. “I have a feeling,” I told her, “that

Marley will never see the upstairs of this house

again.” It was apparent he had climbed his last

staircase. From now on, he would have to get used

to living and sleeping on the ground floor.

I worked from home that day and was upstairs

in the bedroom, writing a column on my laptop

computer, when I heard a commotion on the

stairs. I stopped typing and listened. The sound

was instantly familiar, a sort of loud clomping

noise as if a shod horse were galloping up a gang-

plank. I looked at the bedroom doorway and held

my breath. A few seconds later, Marley popped his

head around the corner and came sauntering into

the room. His eyes brightened when he spotted

John Grogan

me. So there you are! He smashed his head into

my lap, begging for an ear rub, which I figured he

had earned.

“Marley, you made it!” I exclaimed. “You old

hound! I can’t believe you’re up here!”

Later, as I sat on the floor with him and scruffed

his neck, he twisted his head around and gamely

gummed my wrist in his jaws. It was a good sign, a

telltale of the playful puppy still in him. The day

he sat still and let me pet him without trying to

engage me would be the day I knew he had had

enough. The previous night he had seemed on

death’s door, and I again had braced myself for the

worst. Today he was panting and pawing and try-

ing to slime my hands off. Just when I thought his

long, lucky run was over, he was back.

I pulled his head up and made him look me in

the eyes. “You’re going to tell me when it’s time,

right?” I said, more a statement than a question. I

didn’t want to have to make the decision on my

own. “You’ll let me know, won’t you?”

C H A P T E R 2 7

The Big Meadow

❉

Winter arrived early that year, and as the

days grew short and the winds howled

through the frozen branches, we cocooned into

our snug home. I chopped and split a winter’s

worth of firewood and stacked it by the back door.

Jenny made hearty soups and homemade breads,

and the children once again sat in the window and

waited for the snow to arrive. I anticipated the

first snowfall, too, but with a quiet sense of dread,

wondering how Marley could possibly make it

through another tough winter. The previous one

had been hard enough on him, and he had weak-

ened markedly, dramatically, in the ensuing year. I

wasn’t sure how he would navigate ice-glazed

sidewalks, slippery stairs, and a snow-covered

landscape. It was dawning on me why the elderly

retired to Florida and Arizona.

John Grogan

On a blustery Sunday night in mid-December,

when the children had finished their homework

and practiced their musical instruments, Jenny

started the popcorn on the stove and declared a

family movie night. The kids raced to pick out a

video, and I whistled for Marley, taking him out-

side with me to fetch a basket of maple logs off

the woodpile. He poked around in the frozen grass

as I loaded up the wood, standing with his face

into the wind, wet nose sniffing the icy air as if di-

vining winter’s descent. I clapped my hands and

waved my arms to get his attention, and he fol-

lowed me inside, hesitating at the front porch

steps before summoning his courage and lurching

forward, dragging his back legs up behind him.

Inside, I got the fire humming as the kids

queued up the movie. The flames leapt and the

heat radiated into the room, prompting Marley, as

was his habit, to claim the best spot for himself,

directly in front of the hearth. I lay down on the

floor a few feet from him and propped my head on

a pillow, more watching the fire than the movie.

Marley didn’t want to lose his warm spot, but he

couldn’t resist this opportunity. His favorite hu-

man was at ground level in the prone position, ut-

terly defenseless. Who was the alpha male now?

His tail began pounding the floor. Then he started

wiggling his way in my direction. He sashayed

Marley & Me

from side to side on his belly, his rear legs

stretched out behind him, and soon he was

pressed up against me, grinding his head into my

ribs. The minute I reached out to pet him, it was

all over. He pushed himself up on his paws, shook

hard, showering me in loose fur, and stared down

at me, his billowing jowls hanging immediately

over my face. When I started to laugh, he took this

as a green light to advance, and before I quite

knew what was happening, he had straddled my

chest with his front paws and, in one big free fall,

collapsed on top of me in a heap. “Ugh!” I

screamed under his weight. “Full-frontal Lab at-

tack!” The kids squealed. Marley could not be-

lieve his good fortune. I wasn’t even trying to get

him off me. He squirmed, he drooled, he licked

me all over the face and nuzzled my neck. I could

barely breathe under his weight, and after a few

minutes I slid him half off me, where he remained

through most of the movie, his head, shoulder,

and one paw resting on my chest, the rest of him

pressed against my side.

I didn’t say so to anyone in the room, but I

found myself clinging to the moment, knowing

there would not be too many more like it. Marley

was in the quiet dusk of a long and eventful life.

Looking back on it later, I would recognize that

night in front of the fire for what it was, our

John Grogan

farewell party. I stroked his head until he fell

asleep, and then I stroked it some more.

Four days later, we packed the minivan in

preparation for a family vacation to Disney World

in Florida. It would be the children’s first Christ-

mas away from home, and they were wild with ex-

citement. That evening, in preparation for an

early-morning departure, Jenny delivered Marley

to the veterinarian’s office, where she had

arranged for him to spend our week away in the

intensive care unit where the doctors and workers

could keep their eyes on him around the clock and

where he would not be riled by the other dogs. Af-

ter his close call on their watch the previous sum-

mer, they were happy to give him the Cadillac digs

and extra attention at no extra cost.

That night as we finished packing, both Jenny

and I commented on how strange it felt to be in a

dog-free zone. There was no oversized canine

constantly underfoot, shadowing our every move,

trying to sneak out the door with us each time we

carried a bag to the garage. The freedom was lib-

erating, but the house seemed cavernous and

empty, even with the kids bouncing off the walls.

The next morning before the sun was over the

tree line, we piled into the minivan and headed

south. Ridiculing the whole Disney experience is a

favorite sport in the circle of parents I run with.

Marley & Me

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve said, “We

could take the whole family to Paris for the same

amount of money.” But the whole family had a

wonderful time, even naysayer Dad. Of the many

potential pitfalls—sickness, fatigue-induced

tantrums, lost tickets, lost children, sibling

fistfights—we escaped them all. It was a great

family vacation, and we spent much of the long

drive back north recounting the pros and cons of

each ride, each meal, each swim, each moment.

When we were halfway through Maryland, just

four hours from home, my cell phone rang. It was

one of the workers from the veterinarian’s office.

Marley was acting lethargic, she said, and his hips

had begun to droop worse than usual. He seemed

to be in discomfort. She said the vet wanted our

permission to give him a steroid shot and pain

medication. Sure, I said. Keep him comfortable,

and we’d be there to pick him up the next day.

When Jenny arrived to take him home the fol-

lowing afternoon, December 29, Marley looked

tired and a little out of sorts but not visibly ill. As

we had been warned, his hips were weaker than

ever. The doctor talked to her about putting him

on a regimen of arthritis medications, and a

worker helped Jenny lift him into the minivan. But

within a half hour of getting him home, he was

retching, trying to clear thick mucus from his

John Grogan

throat. Jenny let him out into the front yard, and

he simply lay on the frozen ground and could not

or would not budge. She called me at work in a

panic. “I can’t get him back inside,” she said.

“He’s lying out there in the cold, and he won’t get

up.” I left immediately, and by the time I arrived

home forty-five minutes later, she had managed to

get him to his feet and back into the house. I found

him sprawled on the dining room floor, clearly dis-

tressed and clearly not himself.

In thirteen years I had not been able to walk into

the house without him bounding to his feet,

stretching, shaking, panting, banging his tail into

everything, greeting me like I’d just returned from

the Hundred Years’ War. Not on this day. His eyes

followed me as I walked into the room, but he did

not move his head. I knelt down beside him and

rubbed his snout. No reaction. He did not try to

gum my wrist, did not want to play, did not even

lift his head. His eyes were far away, and his tail lay

limp on the floor.

Jenny had left two messages at the animal hospi-

tal and was waiting for a vet to call back, but it was

becoming obvious this was turning into an emer-

gency. I put a third call in. After several minutes,

Marley slowly stood up on shaky legs and tried to

retch again, but nothing would come out. That’s

when I noticed his stomach; it looked bigger than

Marley & Me

usual, and it was hard to the touch. My heart sank;

I knew what this meant. I called back the veteri-

narian’s office, and this time I described Marley’s

bloated stomach. The receptionist put me on hold

for a moment, then came back and said, “The

doctor says to bring him right in.”

Jenny and I did not have to say a word to each

other; we both understood that the moment had

arrived. We braced the kids, telling them Marley

had to go to the hospital and the doctors were go-

ing to try to make him better, but that he was very

sick. As I was getting ready to go, I looked in, and

Jenny and the kids were huddled around him as he

lay on the floor so clearly in distress, making their

good-byes. They each got to pet him and have a

few last moments with him. The children re-

mained bullishly optimistic that this dog who had

been a constant part of their lives would soon be

back, good as new. “Get all better, Marley,”

Colleen said in her little voice.

With Jenny’s help, I got him into the back of my

car. She gave him a last quick hug, and I drove off

with him, promising to call as soon as I learned

something. He lay on the floor in the backseat

with his head resting on the center hump, and I

drove with one hand on the wheel and the other

stretched behind me so I could stroke his head and

shoulders. “Oh, Marley,” I just kept saying.

John Grogan

In the parking lot of the animal hospital, I

helped him out of the car, and he stopped to sniff

a tree where the other dogs all pee—still curious

despite how ill he felt. I gave him a minute, know-

ing this might be his last time in his beloved out-

doors, then tugged gently at his choker chain and

led him into the lobby. Just inside the front door,

he decided he had gone far enough and gingerly

let himself down on the tile floor. When the techs

and I were unable to get him back to his feet, they

brought out a stretcher, slid him onto it, and dis-

appeared with him behind the counter, heading

for the examining area.

A few minutes later, the vet, a young woman I

had never met before, came out and led me into an

exam room where she put a pair of X-ray films up

on a light board. She showed me how his stomach

had bloated to twice its normal size. On the film,

near where the stomach meets the intestines, she

traced two fist-sized dark spots, which she said in-

dicated a twist. Just as with the last time, she said

she would sedate him and insert a tube into his

stomach to release the gas causing the bloating.

She would then use the tube to manually feel for

the back of the stomach. “It’s a long shot,” she

said, “but I’m going to try to use the tube to mas-

sage his stomach back into place.” It was exactly

the same one percent gamble Dr. Hopkinson had

Marley & Me

given over the summer. It had worked once, it

could work again. I remained silently optimistic.

“Okay,” I said. “Please give it your best shot.”

A half hour later she emerged with a grim face.

She had tried three times and was unable to open

the blockage. She had given him more sedatives in

the hope they might relax his stomach muscles.

When none of that worked, she had inserted a

catheter through his ribs, a last-ditch attempt to

clear the blockage, also without luck. “At this

point,” she said, “our only real option is to go into

surgery.” She paused, as if gauging whether I was

ready to talk about the inevitable, and then said,

“Or the most humane thing might be to put him

to sleep.”

Jenny and I had been through this decision five

months earlier and had already made the hard

choice. My visit to Shanksville had only solidified

my resolve not to subject Marley to any more suf-

fering. Yet standing in the waiting room, the hour

upon me once again, I stood frozen. The doctor

sensed my agony and discussed the complications

that could likely be expected in operating on a dog

of Marley’s age. Another thing troubling her, she

said, was a bloody residue that had come out on

the catheter, indicating problems with the stom-

ach wall. “Who knows what we might find when

we get in there,” she said.

John Grogan

I told her I wanted to step outside to call my

wife. On the cell phone in the parking lot, I told

Jenny that they had tried everything short of sur-

gery to no avail. We sat silently on the phone for a

long moment before she said, “I love you, John.”

“I love you, too, Jenny,” I said.

I walked back inside and asked the doctor if I

could have a couple of minutes alone with him.

She warned me that he was heavily sedated. “Take

all the time you need,” she said. I found him un-

conscious on the stretcher on the floor, an IV

shunt in his forearm. I got down on my knees and

ran my fingers through his fur, the way he liked. I

ran my hand down his back. I lifted each floppy

ear in my hands—those crazy ears that had caused

him so many problems over the years and cost us a

king’s ransom—and felt their weight. I pulled his

lip up and looked at his lousy, worn-out teeth. I

picked up a front paw and cupped it in my hand.

Then I dropped my forehead against his and sat

there for a long time, as if I could telegraph a mes-

sage through our two skulls, from my brain to his.

I wanted to make him understand some things.

“You know all that stuff we’ve always said about

you?” I whispered. “What a total pain you are?

Don’t believe it. Don’t believe it for a minute,

Marley.” He needed to know that, and something

more, too. There was something I had never told

Marley & Me

him, that no one ever had. I wanted him to hear it

before he went.

“Marley,” I said. “You are a great dog.”

I found the doctor waiting at the front counter.

“I’m ready,” I said. My voice was cracking, which

surprised me because I had really believed I’d

braced myself months earlier for this moment. I

knew if I said another word, I would break down,

and so I just nodded and signed as she handed me

release forms. When the paperwork was com-

pleted, I followed her back to the unconscious

Marley, and I knelt in front of him again, my

hands cradling his head as she prepared a syringe

and inserted it into the shunt. “Are you okay?” she

asked. I nodded, and she pushed the plunger. His

jaw shuddered ever so slightly. She listened to his

heart and said it had slowed way down but not

stopped. He was a big dog. She prepared a second

syringe and again pushed the plunger. A minute

later, she listened again and said, “He’s gone.” She

left me alone with him, and I gently lifted one of

his eyelids. She was right; Marley was gone.

I walked out to the front desk and paid the bill.

She discussed “group cremation” for $75 or indi-

vidual cremation, with the ashes returned, for

$170. No, I said; I would be taking him home. A

John Grogan

few minutes later, she and an assistant wheeled out

a cart with a large black bag on it and helped me

lift it into the backseat. The doctor shook my

hand, told me how sorry she was. She had done

her best, she said. It was his time, I said, then

thanked her and drove away.

In the car on the way home, I started to cry,

something I almost never do, not even at funerals.

It only lasted a few minutes. By the time I pulled

into the driveway, I was dry-eyed again. I left

Marley in the car and went inside where Jenny was

sitting up, waiting. The children were all in bed

asleep; we would tell them in the morning. We fell

into each other’s arms and both started weeping. I

tried to describe it to her, to assure her he was al-

ready deeply asleep when the end came, that there

was no panic, no trauma, no pain. But I couldn’t

find the words. So we simply rocked in each

other’s arms. Later, we went outside and together

lifted the heavy black bag out of the car and into

the garden cart, which I rolled into the garage for

the night.

C H A P T E R 2 8

Beneath the Cherry Trees

❉

Sleep came fitfully that night, and an hour be-

fore dawn I slid out of bed and dressed quietly

so as not to wake Jenny. In the kitchen I drank a

glass of water—coffee could wait—and walked

out into a light, slushy drizzle. I grabbed a shovel

and pickax and walked to the pea patch, which

hugged the white pines where Marley had sought

potty refuge the previous winter. It was here I had

decided to lay him to rest.

The temperature was in the mid-thirties and

the ground blessedly unfrozen. In the half dark, I

began to dig. Once I was through a thin layer of

topsoil, I hit heavy, dense clay studded with

rocks—the backfill from the excavation of our

basement—and the going was slow and arduous.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-24