Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family (33 page)

“Thirsty,” she told me now, her lips parched.

“She can’t drink any water,” the nurse told me, “but I’ll bring you some ice chips that you can give her.”

She handed me shaved ice on little wooden sticks. I went over to Pearl’s bedside and held one of them in her mouth as she
sucked away on it, grateful to keep her lips moist. She seemed a little more alert.

“Let’s call Lee and you can say hello,” I told her. Granny nodded her head.

I put the call through on my cell phone and held it up to her ear, “Pearlie, are you okay? Are you in pain?” Lee asked.

“No, I’m okay,” Pearl whispered, almost inaudible. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. Pearlie, are you having a hard time talking?”

“Yes.”

“Then just listen. Glenn will be back in the morning, and I’ll see you in the afternoon.” Lee began to cry, silently, sensing
that this could be their last call.

“I love you, Pearlie Girlie.”

“I love you too.”

“I’ll see you later,” she said.

A few minutes later, I said good night to Granny and headed home from the hospital. “Okay, Granny,” I said, holding her hand.
“I’m going to go now and I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

She looked up at me and nodded.

And that was the last time I ever saw Pearl.

That morning, October 18, 2004, at about 3:00 a.m., I was startled when my phone rang. I picked up the receiver, half asleep.
It was a male nurse from St. Vincent’s whom I had met earlier that day. “I’m sorry to tell you that your friend Pearl passed
away a few minutes ago.”

“How?” I asked.

“She had no pain. She just fell asleep, stopped breathing.”

So this was it. Death is strange. One minute, the person you love is right there, holding your hand, sick but breathing and
alive. Then they’re gone.

In a way, I was relieved. Granny was free. All the suffering was over.

She’d been lost in profound sadness since Katie’s death, sleeping the days away or endlessly watching TV, waiting for the
end to come. A horrible silence had enveloped her household for months at a time, what with John and Ryan long gone and me
so often away.

And now, at the ripe age of ninety-two, Granny could rest in peace.

I went into my dining room, where I kept all the leather-bound scrapbooks, twenty of them lined up along a built-in bookcase,
each organized by theme (“Granny’s Eighty-fifth Party,” “Katie the Wonder Dog,” “Halloween,” “Valentine’s
Day,” etc.). I pulled out the biggest book, a red one, filled with pictures of Granny, Katie, Ryan, John, and me.

I took it into bed with me, and spent the rest of the night turning page after page as the story of our lives came back to
life in complete detail. In two of the most poignant pictures, I saw Pearl holding Ryan’s hand, and years later, Naia holding
Pearl’s
hand, each supporting and protecting the other.

How fortunate we all were to have found in Pearl a mother, grandmother, friend, confidante, and neighbor—all rolled into one.
And how blessed we were to have been brought together by Katie.

At daybreak, the first person I called with the news of Granny’s passing was Lee, who had returned to town from New Jersey
with the intention of seeing Pearl at the hospital. After a very brief phone conversation, Lee came up to my apartment. When
I opened the door, she stood there, crushed and incredibly sad. For just a moment, we looked at each other, and then she fell
into my arms, crying, bereft that her Pearlie Girlie was gone.

After a few minutes together, we went down to Granny’s apartment to break the news to Naia. She was inconsolable. She had
spent over two years, day and night, taking care of Granny, and they had become incredibly close.

“I felt terrible,” Naia later told me. “Pearl and I were so attached… it was overwhelming to lose her.”

As Naia had no home of her own, I asked if she’d like to stay on for a while in Pearl’s apartment. But she shook her head
no, bent over at the dining table sobbing as Lee held her in her arms. I looked around the apartment, at Granny’s wheelchair,
at the medicine bottles, and at the empty twin bed that she’d left just the day before. I looked at all the little knickknacks
Pearl loved, her prized collection of Broadway programs and cookbooks, and her healthy plants lovingly tended to along the
windowsill. It all seemed desolate without her there.

The next day, when Lee and I got to the funeral home, we entered the chapel to say our final good-byes. Although I dreaded
seeing Granny, she looked very much at peace, lovely really. Her face was beautiful.

Into her coffin, Lee placed the cherished honeymoon photo of a very young Pearl and Arthur out for a stroll on the boardwalk
in Atlantic City. She also put in Pearl’s porcelain doll and the afghan her mother had knitted, both of which had given her
such comfort. And finally, I stepped forward to put in a framed picture of Katie, the one taken at Granny’s eighty-fifth birthday
party, where she sat happily in Pearl’s arms, outfitted in one of her party dresses. Now they could rest together.

At the Westchester cemetery, there were about twenty-five people, a mix of Pearl’s relatives, friends, and neighbors, including
Lee, Naia, Paul, and Rose, plus my sister Debby, who loved Pearl and came in from Albany for it. I was especially glad that
John and Ryan were coincidentally in the United States on a short visit and able to be there. What a bittersweet reunion.
Ryan was somber and, at age thirteen, looked so handsome and grown up. I think this was probably his first brush with death,
and he was very brave about it. I know how much he loved Granny.

John spoke poignantly of Pearl, about her strength and pragmatic spirit, her warmth and giving nature, and how she gave John
and Ryan a second home when they most needed one. “She always made time for us, even when Arthur was sick—and after he died,
she adopted us both.

“Pa-Re-El became my confidante and never hesitated to express her point of view when she thought I was messing up!”
he added with a laugh. He reminded us of her steady calmness, her constant willingness to help, and her funny and fun-loving
nature. “We will miss her terribly,” he finished.

Lee then spoke of Pearl, whom she described as “a woman of today—strong, independent, with a wit as sharp as a tack. And she
used it until the last days of her life, keeping us in line when we needed it.”

“Pearl,” she added, “was quick to point out our shortcomings, but always in a humorous and loving way. It was on September
11 that I found Pearl, alone and confused. There was an immediate bond forged amid the horror of the day, which grew and sustained
our friendship. I was always hugging and kissing her and I know she loved it. We will miss you, Pearlie Girlie.”

Then Rose, who had so faithfully supported Pearl in her final days, stepped forward with a poignant poem about God calling
Pearl home, “though she will never be alone,” said Rose, “because part of us went with her.”

As I stood there on that crisp sunny October morning, I felt content to let other people have their say about Granny. I had
nothing I really wanted to say myself, not that day, and not in public.

As all families do, we were now experiencing the inevitable loss that comes with illness and death. But I was somehow numb
to the sadness that day as I found myself gazing up at the trees and rolling hills of the cemetery.

Knowing Pearl’s love of nature, I was thinking she would have taken special pleasure in the beautiful Japanese maples, oaks,
and dogwoods now surrounding her.

It would take time for me to fully understand the grand pattern of what had happened over sixteen years and what it all meant.
All I knew was that I missed Oldest, my closest friend
and Katie’s keeper, and that she would never be far from my mind, just as Katie never was.

As I looked up at the sky, I imagined my dog’s spirit somewhere up there merging with her beloved Granny, both together at
last, with Katie snuggled up against Pearl, the two of them blissfully content.

D
uring the next few months, I was leveled by the loss.

It felt like the final blow, with Granny, Katie, and Arthur gone, while John and Ryan were back again in Paris, our reunion
all too brief. Even Naia, whom I was so fond of, was leaving. Everyone had moved on… but I was still here living along the
hallway that was now eerily quiet.

Although Ryan and John would periodically keep in touch, the unique closeness we once felt could never be captured again.
Partly because of the geographical distance that separated us, there was no chance of holding onto what we’d had. And the
matriarch of our family and Katie were both gone—twin spirits that had kept us all united.

After just a few months, though, I concentrated less on what I had lost, less on the past, and more on
appreciating
the gift that had been given to me.

I saw that what I had experienced was the abiding love of family—in the form that I had found it—a singularly happy living
situation that could not last forever—but one that lives always within its surviving members.

So although our family, in a physical sense, could not
survive the inevitability of death and changing circumstances, the memory of our unique bond could never be forgotten.

The lesson in all this, for me, was a simple one:
LOVE REMAINS
.

It always does. It always will.

It lives on firmly in my heart and in John’s and in Ryan’s—and in Lee, Rose, Paul, and Naia—and in Katie’s beloved Ramon and
her lifetime groomer Betty.

I hear each of their voices so clearly, and see, in flashback, the entire movie of our lives together.

Nowadays, each morning at 10:00 a.m., a lanky young man with brown curly hair can be found walking along the right bank of
the Seine with his two dogs, Jacqui, an assertive black teacup poodle (“the boss”) and Chance, a mellow white-and-brown-spotted
papillon.

He’s laughing as the spunky dogs pull him along, steering him toward a neighborhood patisserie, where he buys a chocolate
croissant.

“No, chocolate isn’t good for dogs,” he lectures the hungry canines, instead feeding them a cinnamon palmier, a puff pastry
with granulated sugar. This young man with the deep baritone voice is
Ryan
! And I can barely juxtapose the boisterous, plump-cheeked boy I remember so well with this mature, rather poised nineteen-year-old.