Typically on Sunday mornings my husband and I share articles from the New York Times. He’ll often read me pieces while I prepare breakfast or vice versa, and we’ll discuss the ones that pique our interest. The year-end edition of the Sunday Magazine runs detailed obituaries on a handful of famous and infamous people who died that year. Though many are well-known — actors, x-presidents, and the like, some are more obscure, but they all share one thing in common. They all had [at least] 15 minutes of fame.
I began to feel increasingly irritated as my husband read the list of obits this morning. My mom, who died earlier this year, will never be in The Times. Where was the balance with the everyday hero — the dad who worked his life to support his family, or the career woman who slated her ambitions to be a mom? The nurse who stayed through the worst of Covid? The teacher that ignited your passion for your chosen career? The rideshare driver that played therapist to his passengers? Their stories are equally important as some one-hit wonder or marginal actor.
Even the most common among us had lives that mattered, that touched many, and their stories deserve to be told.
On my mother’s death bed she asked me “Did I make a difference?” She stared at me with sunken eyes, her skeletal face practically begging me for an affirmative answer. And I gave her one. And, of course, it was true. She was my mom. She made a difference to me.
She turned me on to love, color, beauty, nature, music, art. She would often point out a vibrant flower, stop everything to view a sunset, and be truly awestruck by its magnificence. My mom was childlike in many ways, always curious, and loved learning. She genuinely liked people. She was open to most all ideas as long as they weren’t filled with hate, or born of ignorance.
My mother was a humanitarian, and without prejudice, and she taught me to respect all things equally.
She was a wife for nearly 50 years. My father used to call her his ‘sunshine.’ Laughter and joy came easily to her. They danced beautifully together. He’d glide her across any dance floor in perfect sync, though he was 6’3″ and 230 pds, and she a mere 5′ and slight. She sang all the time and had a beautiful voice, often carrying the harmony that blended perfectly with my father’s melody.
My mom was a passionate and devoted teacher. She created an ocean science program through the Cabrillo Marine Museum she taught to underprivileged kids that is still active today. I’ve had the privilege of meeting several of her students while with my mom in the market or mall. They’d stop her in the aisle and tout her praises, often claimed they became oceanographers and biologists because of her influence. She loved kids. They were uncomplicated — what she pretended to be, even wanted to be, but wasn’t.
I sat cross-legged next to her lying on her death bed trying to exude the love I felt for this woman, my mother. But as I ran through her list of accomplishments, her expression became darker and sadder, and my “turn that frown upside down” mom started to cry. She wanted to give so much more. She had so much more to give, but she realized, lying helpless in bed and gasping for every breath, her time had run out.
Two weeks later I stood over her grave and refused the dirt-filled shovel the Rabbi handed to me. I knelt and scooped a handful of moist, sweet earth from the freshly dug ground, smelled its musty richness, and then let it fall off my hand and run through my fingers as I released it onto her casket. And then I silently thanked her for teaching me to recognize natural beauty and engage with it at every opportunity.
My mom died of cancer at 73. Over 100 people attended her funeral. Another hundred or more have contacted our family since her death to give their condolences — lives she touched, who will touch the lives of others, and so on.
Andy Warhol was wrong. Most of us live and die in obscurity.
But we make a difference.
Please, feel free to share a story of someone who has passed that mattered to YOU, in Comments below…
I got her at the pound on my 26th birthday, a fluff-ball Shepherd mix with big brown eyes, floppy ears, and a perfect black diamond dead in the center of her tan forehead. She was just seven weeks old, not yet ready for adoption. I lied to get her out. They found her in the San Fernando hills and thought she was feral, but I told them she was mine and I’d lost her on a hike up near Mt. Wilson.
I named her Killer Dog Face. Killer as in cool. Dog because she was one. And Face after a term of endearment my mother used to call me. I figured she deserved three names like most everyone else had, but I called her by her last name almost all the time.
My beautiful Face.
Over two feet tall and 70 pounds by her first birthday, her paws and ears remained adorably exaggerated against her slender but muscular frame, and for almost ten years everyone thought she was still a puppy. An impressive athlete, she could pace me on my bike at 25 miles an hour, and clear a five-foot wall or a six-foot wide river in one fluid motion.
I worked from home, so we were together practically 24/7. Tail would be swishing and she’d have her happy smile on when she’d periodically lope in throughout the day from sunbathing or chasing squirrels and crows in the backyard. She’d smooch her muzzle into my thigh, then rub her body along my legs rather cat-like, soliciting for strokes. I loved her company, felt sated when she was with me. Face was easy to be with, required little and listened well. And she always made me feel important, and valued.
I taught her to Stay. Drop. Leave it! And that was about it. Stupid dog tricks were degrading. She accompanied me everywhere, muzzle out the window, jowls flapping in the wind while she took it all in, reminding me to get out of my head and absorb the moments at hand. She greeted most everyone with a tail wag and her happy grin. Face was a gentle lass and she genuinely liked pretty much everybody. I gave her a home, and the attention she required for her security. She made me feel wanted, appreciated, safer, and not so alone. Forever forward, our relationship will remain one of the most stable, even exchanges of love and respect I will ever know.
I found out about the slip disks in her spine a few months after her 10th birthday. We had gone hiking in the coastal mountains of Marin and she took off after something pacing us along a grove of redwoods. When I called for her, she was way down in a gulch, and I could tell she was struggling to make it back up the hill to me. The vet said she’d probably messed up her back, and that even though it was treatable with vitamin supplements, eventually she would get arthritis from the bad disks pinching her nerves. And though it took another five years, the vet turned out to be right.
I never expected to be faced with having to put her down. I assumed she’d go off a cliff chasing a squirrel or miss when jumping over a river and I wouldn’t be around to save her. Everyone kept telling me it was time. At 16 she had hip problems, and walking problems, and was becoming incontinent. I felt sad for her a lot, watching her struggle to get up or stay up while excreting. And then I had my son. And Face wasn’t the baby anymore. And she was sad a lot too. Her health problems went from bad to worse and picking up her poop all over the house where an infant crawled was more than just disgusting. It was a health hazard.
I’ve always thought that if I ever got a terminal disease, I would choose to end my life before I was unable to do so. Before I lost all my faculties I’d go in the garage and turn on the car or find the right drugs to take me over the edge. It never dawned on me to think differently until I was faced with the responsibility of having to make that choice for a loved one.
I sat on the floor next to my dog in her newly confined space in the tile entry wishing she could tell me what to do. She lay in her bed with her head in my lap as I scratched her muzzle, then behind her ears. She rolled onto her side for me to scratch her belly. Her pained expression turned to momentary bliss as I gently stroked her, recalling some of our time together. Yellowstone; Breckenridge; Yosemite; the Grand Canyon; watching her tear after birds on the countless shorelines we’d strolled. We’d shared some grand adventures, but mostly quiet exchanges of affection, like the one we were sharing right then. Perhaps these moments — the times I stroked her or rubbed her belly made living in pain worth it. Who was I to facilitate her death? I was suddenly torn by the choice I had to make.
I had her put down eight months after her 16th birthday. She couldn’t walk. Her hind legs kept giving out. She wasn’t eating, or even drinking much anymore. I made the call on a Saturday morning. A certified veterinarian came to my house with a truck, complete with a metal table and loaded with medical equipment. I carried Face to the truck and placed her on the table, then stood there stroking her and crying. The doctor softly informed me that he would be giving my dog a tranquilizer, then taking her to his office where he would administer the fatal cocktail that would kill her. He assured me she would drift into blackness forever without waking. I didn’t ask what they’d do with her body. I didn’t want to know.
I held my dog’s head in my hands while the vet administered the tranquilizer. “Thank you for sharing your life with me, for being my friend,” I whispered to her as the doctor removed the needle from her hindquarters. “I love you. I will think of you often. I’ll miss you terribly, my beauty. Goodbye, sweet Face.”
She lay on the cold metal table and stared at me until her eyes closed. I stroked her head one last time, lay my hand on the black diamond marking on her head and kissed her between the eyes.
As I left the truck the doctor assured me I’d made the right decision, the “humane choice.” I stood at the curb until the truck pulled away, held my arms clasped on top of my head to hold in my brain, and contain my emotions. My quiet street was deserted again, and I looked around for my dog to come inside with me when it hit me, my Killer Dog Face was gone. My arms came down and with it any facade of composure. I sank to the sidewalk sobbing. I must have sat there for 20 minutes crying, until I got up and started walking, then running.
I ran as fast and hard as I could, for as long as I could, trying to outrun reality, trying to outrun my grief. My beautiful Face was dead, the first loss of a loved one I’d ever experienced, and the idea of her gone from my life was so profoundly empty, black, lonely, that it made me physically ill by the time I got to the bridge. I stopped in the center and threw up over the side into the L.A. wash.
When I finished vomiting I stood gripping the cool metal railing of the bridge and staring down at the thin stream of water below. “I HATE YOU!” I screamed. It was dusk by then. No one was around. Not a whole lot of people even knew about that bridge. At one end was an upscale residential neighborhood, on the other were exclusive condos. “You killed her and I HATE YOU!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, knowing I wasn’t speaking to anyone, nothing was hearing me.
“May I help you, Miss?” He asked softly, but it startled me anyway. I hadn’t seen him approach. He had come across [the bridge] from the condo side. He was Indian, from India, middle-aged, with soft brown eyes and dark, close cropped hair. I think he thought I was going to jump off the bridge.
“My dog died,” I told him. I started crying hard again hearing that reality aloud. I don’t know why I told him. So often when people ask we’re supposed to pretend we’re fine because they really don’t want to know anyway. “I really loved her.”
He nodded, let a few moments pass in silence then said, “My aunt died last week. I’m still very sad. I miss her very much.” He stood a few feet from me, his head slightly cocked to one side. He let his eyes rest on mine.
“I’m sorry about your aunt,” was all I could think of to say. The man had put his aunt on par with my dog, and I was humbled, and grateful.
“I’m sorry about your dog,” he said. “I hope your sadness will temper in time with good memories.” He gave a slight bow and moved across the bridge.
I watched him until he disappeared into the neighborhood beyond, and left the bridge soon after him. On my way home I let my mind wander over my time with my Killer Dog Face. I cried. I even smiled once or twice through the tears.
My sadness has tempered over the years. Most times when I think of my beautiful Face the memories are sweet. But to this day, 20 years later, the pain of her loss still fills me with unmitigated terror, a now ever-present awareness of the enormous cost of love.
My mother was crying when I walked into the kitchen around sunset, her hips sunk into the linoleum counter top. She was slouched against the handle of the refrigerator door holding on to it as if to hold herself up. I looked over at my father who sat in his usual place at the head of the kitchen table. He had his stoic face on but his sadness was palpable. My sister sat across from him. She too was crying.
“What’s going on?” I was afraid of the answer, hoping it had something to do with my 98-year old grandmother since anything else was sure to be very bad.
“My Pepper dog is dead.” My mother kept her head down but I saw her tears fall to the floor.
No. That can’t be. When I left for the beach that morning she was fine. “Are you kidding?” The words sort of fell out of my mouth, hope trampling reason. It was clear she wasn’t kidding. Everyone stared at me with their jaw somewhat dropped but they didn’t say anything. “What happened?” It just seemed so implausible— not after 14 years and to date the dog had never been sick.
“We think she got bit by a rabid squirrel, or ate something poisonous.” My dad tried to keep his tone even but I caught the quiver. “Mom found her in the backyard in the bushes after calling her in for dinner and she didn’t come.” Then I saw the tears cascade down my father’s cheeks. I’d seen my dad cry only one other time, when JFK was assassinated. That’s when I ran out of the house. And kept running.
No! This can’t be happening. Not Pepper. Not my beautiful pound-hound Shepard. Not my best friend, sometimes my only friend, always there all these years to let me know I was valued. I should have taken her to the beach regardless of the hassle of looking out for her all day, kept her with me, safe, like she’d protected me from lonely. I should have played frisbee with her more, done more road trips, spent more time with her. I ached for more time with my bright-eyed, big eared dog.
I ran as fast and hard as I could, for as long as I could, trying to outrun reality, trying to outrun the hurt in me. My Pepper dog was gone, the first loss of a loved one I’d ever experienced, and the idea of her gone from my life was so profoundly empty, black, lonely, lonely, lonely it made me physically ill by the time I got to the bridge, stopped in the center and threw up over the side into the L.A. wash. When I finished, I leaned my face against the cool metal rail, and cried.
“I HATE YOU!!” I screamed at the heavens. It was dusk by then. No one was around. Not a whole lot of people even knew about that bridge. At one end was an upscale residential neighborhood, on the other were exclusive condos. “How could you take her away from me?! I HATE YOU!” I yelled at the top of my lungs through my tears, knowing I wasn’t speaking to anyone; no one, nothing was hearing me. I guess what I meant was, ‘I hate me.’ Right at that moment the loss hurt so badly that I hated myself for loving her.
“May I help you Miss?” He asked softly, but it startled me anyway. I hadn’t seen him approach. He had come across [the bridge] from the condo side. He was Indian, from India, with the softest brown eyes I’d ever seen. I think he thought I was going to jump off the bridge.
“My dog died,” I told him. I started crying hard again as that reality sunk into my heart. I don’t know why I told him. So often when people ask we’re supposed to pretend we’re fine because they really don’t want to know anyway. “I really loved her.”
He nodded, let a few moments pass in silence then said, “My aunt died last week. I am still very sad. I miss her very much.” He stood erect a few feet from me, his head slightly cocked to one side. He let his eyes rest on mine for only a moment then he looked down, consumed by the black hole of loss.
“I’m sorry about your aunt,” was all I could think of to say. The man had put his aunt on par with my dog, and I was humbled, and grateful.
“I’m sorry about your dog,” he said. “I hope your sadness will temper in time with good memories.” He gave a slight bow and moved across the bridge.
His kindness tempered my pain, a ray of light in the suffocating blackness. I watched him until he disappeared into the neighborhood beyond, but did not lose sight of his wisdom.
I left the bridge soon after him. On my way home I let my mind wander over my time with my Pepper dog. I cried. I even smiled once or twice through the tears.
My sadness has tempered over the years. Most times when I think of her the memories are sweet. But to this day, 35 years later, the pain of her loss still fills me with unmitigated terror, a now ever-present awareness of the enormous cost of love.
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