When Jenny answered her cell phone she was on a crowded tour boat with the kids in the middle of Boston Harbor. I could hear the boat's engine chugging and the guide's voice booming through a loudspeaker in the background. We had a choppy, awkward conversation over a bad connection. Neither of us could hear the other well. I shouted to try to communicate what we were up against. She was only getting snippets. Marley...emergency...stomach...surgery...put to sleep.

There was silence on the other end. "h.e.l.lo?" I said. "Are you still there?"

"I'm here," Jenny said, then went quiet again. We both knew this day would come eventually; we just did not think it would be today. Not with her and the kids out of town where they couldn't even have their good-byes; not with me ninety minutes away in downtown Philadelphia with work commitments. By the end of the conversation, through shouts and blurts and pregnant pauses, we decided there was really no decision at all. The vet was right. Marley was fading on all fronts. It would be cruel to put him through a traumatic surgery to simply try to stave off the inevitable. We could not ignore the high cost, either. It seemed obscene, almost immoral, to spend that kind of money on an old dog at the end of his life when there were unwanted dogs put down every day for lack of a home, and more important, children not getting proper medical attention for lack of financial resources. If this was Marley's time, then it was his time, and we would see to it he went out with dignity and without suffering. We knew it was the right thing, yet neither of us was ready to lose him.

I called the veterinarian back and told her our decision. "His teeth are rotted away, he's stone-deaf, and his hips have gotten so bad he can barely get up the porch stoop anymore," I told her as if she needed convincing. "He's having trouble squatting to have a bowel movement."

The vet, whom I now knew as Dr. Hopkinson, made it easy on me. "I think it's time," she said.

"I guess so," I answered, but I didn't want her to put him down without calling me first. I wanted to be there with him if possible. "And," I reminded her, "I'm still holding out for that one percent miracle."

"Let's talk in an hour," she said.

An hour later Dr. Hopkinson sounded slightly more optimistic. Marley was still holding his own, resting with an intravenous drip in his front leg. She raised his odds to five percent. "I don't want you to get your hopes up," she said. "He's a very sick dog."

The next morning the doctor sounded brighter still. "He had a good night," she said. When I called back at noon, she had removed the IV from his paw and started him on a slurry of rice and meat. "He's famished," she reported. By the next call, he was up on his feet. "Good news," she said. "One of our techs just took him outside and he p.o.o.ped and peed." I cheered into the phone as though he had just taken Best in Show. Then she added: "He must be feeling better. He just gave me a big sloppy kiss on the lips." Yep, that was our Marley.

"I wouldn't have thought it possible yesterday," the doc said, "but I think you'll be able to take him home tomorrow." The following evening after work, that's just what I did. He looked terrible-weak and skeletal, his eyes milky and crusted with mucus, as if he had been to the other side of death and back, which in a sense I guess he had. I must have looked a little ill myself after paying the eight-hundred-dollar bill. When I thanked the doctor for her good work, she replied, "The whole staff loves Marley. Everyone was rooting for him."

I walked him out to the car, my ninety-nine-toone-odds miracle dog, and said, "Let's get you home where you belong." He just stood there looking woefully into the backseat, knowing it was as unattainable as Mount Olympus. He didn't even try to hop in. I called to one of the kennel workers, who helped me gingerly lift him into the car, and I drove him home with a box of medicines and strict instructions. Marley would never again gulp a huge meal in one sitting, or slurp unlimited amounts of water. His days of playing submarine with his snout in the water bowl were over. From now on, he was to receive four small meals a day and only limited rations of water-a half cup or so in his bowl at a time. In this way, the doctor hoped, his stomach would stay calm and not bloat and twist again. He also was never again to be boarded in a large kennel surrounded by barking, pacing dogs. I was convinced, and Dr. Hopkinson seemed to be, too, that that had been the precipitating factor in his close call with death.

That night, after I got him home and inside, I spread a sleeping bag on the floor in the family room beside him. He was not up to climbing the stairs to the bedroom, and I didn't have the heart to leave him alone and helpless. I knew he would fret all night if he was not at my side. "We're having a sleepover, Marley!" I proclaimed, and lay down next to him. I stroked him head to tail until huge clouds of fur rolled off his back. I wiped the mucus from the corners of his eyes and scratched his ears until he moaned with pleasure. Jenny and the kids would be home in the morning; she would pamper him with frequent minimeals of boiled hamburger and rice. It had taken him thirteen years, but Marley had finally merited people food, not leftovers but a stovetop meal made just for him. The children would throw their arms around him, unaware of how close they had come to never seeing him again.

Tomorrow the house would be loud and boisterous and full of life again. For tonight, it was just the two of us, Marley and me. Lying there with him, his smelly breath in my face, I couldn't help thinking of our first night together all those years ago after I brought him home from the breeder, a tiny puppy whimpering for his mother. I remembered how I dragged his box into the bedroom and the way we had fallen asleep together, my arm dangling over the side of the bed to comfort him. Thirteen years later, here we were, still inseparable. I thought about his puppyhood and adolescence, about the shredded couches and eaten mattresses, about the wild walks along the Intra-coastal and the cheek-to-jowl dances with the stereo blaring. I thought about the swallowed objects and purloined paychecks and sweet moments of canine-human empathy. Mostly I thought about what a good and loyal companion he had been all these years. What a trip it had been.

"You really scared me, old man," I whispered as he stretched out beside me and slid his snout beneath my arm to encourage me to keep petting him. "It's good to have you home."

We fell asleep together, side by side on the floor, his rump half on my sleeping bag, my arm draped across his back. He woke me once in the night, his shoulders flinching, his paws twitching, little baby barks coming from deep in his throat, more like coughs than anything else. He was dreaming. Dreaming, I imagined, that he was young and strong again. And running like there was no tomorrow.

CHAPTER 26.

Borrowed Time.

Over the next several weeks, Marley bounced back from the edge of death. The mischievous sparkle returned to his eyes, the cool wetness to his nose, and a little meat to his bones. For all he'd been through, he seemed none the worse off. He was content to snooze his days away, favoring a spot in front of the gla.s.s door in the family room where the sun flooded in and baked his fur. On his new low-bulk diet of pet.i.te meals, he was perpetually ravenous and was begging and thieving food more shamelessly than ever. One evening I caught him alone in the kitchen up on his hind legs with his front paws on the kitchen counter, stealing Rice Krispies Treats from a platter. How he got up there on his frail hips, I'll never know. Infirmities be d.a.m.ned; when the will called, Marley's body answered. I wanted to hug him, I was so happy at the surprise display of strength.

The scare of that summer should have snapped Jenny and me out of our denial about Marley's advancing age, but we quickly returned to the comfortable a.s.sumption that the crisis was a one-time fluke, and his eternal march into the sunset could resume once again. Part of us wanted to believe he could chug on forever. Despite all his frailties, he was still the same happy-go-lucky dog. Each morning after his breakfast, he trotted into the family room to use the couch as a giant napkin, walking along its length, rubbing his snout and mouth against the fabric as he went and flipping up the cushions in the process. Then he would turn around and come back in the opposite direction so he could wipe the other side. From there he would drop to the floor and roll onto his back, wiggling from side to side to give himself a back rub. He liked to sit and lick the carpeting with l.u.s.t, as if it had been larded with the most delectable gravy he had ever tasted. His daily routine included barking at the mailman, visiting the chickens, staring at the bird feeder, and making the rounds of the bathtub faucets to check for any drips of water he could lap up. Several times a day he flipped the lid up on the kitchen trash can to see what goodies he could scavenge. On a daily basis, he launched into Labrador evader mode, banging around the house, tail thumping the walls and furniture, and on a daily basis I continued to pry open his jaws and extract from the roof of his mouth all sorts of flotsam from our daily lives-potato skins and m.u.f.fin wrappers, discarded Kleenex and dental floss. Even in old age, some things did not change.

As September 11, 2003, approached, I drove across the state to the tiny mining town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 had crashed into an empty field on that infamous morning two years earlier amid a pa.s.senger uprising. The hijackers who had seized the flight were believed to be heading for Washington, D.C., to crash the plane into the White House or the Capitol, and the pa.s.sengers who rushed the c.o.c.kpit almost certainly saved countless lives on the ground. To mark the second anniversary of the attacks, my editors wanted me to visit the site and take my best shot at capturing that sacrifice and the lasting effect it had on the American psyche.

I spent the entire day at the crash site, lingering at the impromptu memorial that had risen there. I talked to the steady stream of visitors who showed up to pay their respects, interviewed locals who remembered the force of the explosion, sat with a woman who had lost her daughter in a car accident and who came to the crash site to find solace in communal grief. I doc.u.mented the many mementoes and notes that filled the gravel parking lot. Still I was not feeling the column. What could I say about this immense tragedy that had not been said already? I went to dinner in town and pored over my notes. Writing a newspaper column is a lot like building a tower out of blocks; each nugget of information, each quote and captured moment, is a block. You start by building a broad foundation, strong enough to support your premise, then work your way up toward the pinnacle. My notebook was full of solid building blocks, but I was missing the mortar to hold them all together. I had no idea what to do with them.

After I finished my meat loaf and iced tea, I headed back to the hotel to try to write. Halfway there, on an impulse, I pulled a U-turn and drove back out to the crash site, several miles outside town, arriving just as the sun was slipping behind the hillside and the last few visitors were pulling away. I sat out there alone for a long time, as sunset turned to dusk and dusk to night. A sharp wind blew down off the hills, and I pulled my Windbreaker tight around me. Towering overhead, a giant American flag snapped in the breeze, its colors glowing almost iridescent in the last smoldering light. Only then did the emotion of this sacred place envelop me and the magnitude of what happened in the sky above this lonely field begin to sink in. I looked out on the spot where the plane hit the earth and then up at the flag, and I felt tears stinging my eyes. For the first time in my life, I took the time to count the stripes. Seven red and six white. I counted the stars, fifty of them on a field of blue. It meant more to us now, this American flag. To a new generation, it stood once again for valor and sacrifice. I knew what I needed to write.

I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked 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 people who rose to the moment, knowing it was their last. One was humility, for I was alive and untouched by the horrors of that day, free to continue 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 preciousness. We take it for granted, but it is fragile, precarious, 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 the boundless capacity of the human heart, at once big enough to absorb a tragedy of this magnitude 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 inevitable. 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 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. 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 I mean Marley really, really really misses you. He's driving us all bonkers." misses you. He's driving 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 behind doors and in closets. He struggled to get upstairs 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, 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 telling him. That's where he was the next morning when Jenny went downstairs to make breakfast. A couple of hours pa.s.sed 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 inadvertently 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 loyalty." 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 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, ma.s.saging 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 upstairs 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 incapacitated, 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. 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. Marley, 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 relieve 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 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 puddle spreading out around him. It was the first time since he was a tiny puppy that Marley had urinated 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 together 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 gangplank. 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 me. So there you are! So there you are! He smashed his head into my lap, begging for an ear rub, which I figured he had earned. 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 trying 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?"

CHAPTER 27.

The Big Meadow.

Winter arrived early that year, and as the days grew short and the winds howled through the frozen branches, we coc.o.o.ned 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 weakened 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.

On a bl.u.s.tery 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 outside with me to fetch a basket of maple logs off the woodpile. He poked around in the frozen gra.s.s as I loaded up the wood, standing with his face into the wind, wet nose sniffing the icy air as if divining winter's descent. I clapped my hands and waved my arms to get his attention, and he followed 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 human was at ground level in the p.r.o.ne position, utterly defenseless. Who was the alpha male now? His tail began pounding the floor. Then he started wiggling his way in my direction. He sashayed 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 attack!" The kids squealed. Marley could not believe 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 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 Christmas away from home, and they were wild with excitement. 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. After his close call on their watch the previous summer, 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 liberating, 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. 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 following 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 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 distressed 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 hospital and was waiting for a vet to call back, but it was becoming obvious this was turning into an emergency. 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 usual, and it was hard to the touch. My heart sank; I knew what this meant. I called back the veterinarian'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 going 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 remained 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.

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, knowing this might be his last time in his beloved outdoors, 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 disappeared 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 indicated 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 ma.s.sage his stomach back into place." It was exactly the same one percent gamble Dr. Hopkinson had 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 suffering. 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 b.l.o.o.d.y residue that had come out on the catheter, indicating problems with the stomach wall. "Who knows what we might find when we get in there," she said.

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 surgery 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 unconscious 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 message 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 him, that no one ever had. I wanted him to hear it before he went.

"Marley," I said. "You are a great great dog." 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 completed, 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 individual cremation, with the ashes returned, for $170. No, I said; I would be taking him home. A few minutes later, she and an a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sure her he was already 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.

CHAPTER 28.

Beneath the Cherry Trees.

Sleep came fitfully that night, and an hour before dawn I slid out of bed and dressed quietly so as not to wake Jenny. In the kitchen I drank a gla.s.s 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 bas.e.m.e.nt-and the going was slow and arduous. After fifteen minutes I peeled off my coat and paused to catch my breath. After thirty minutes I was in a sweat and not yet down two feet. At the forty-five-minute mark, I struck water. The hole began to fill. And fill. Soon a foot of muddy cold water covered the bottom. I fetched a bucket and tried to bail it, but more water just seeped in. There was no way I could lay Marley down in that icy swamp. No way.

Despite the work I had invested in it-my heart was pounding like I had just run a marathon-I abandoned the location and scouted the yard, stopping where the lawn meets the woods at the bottom of the hill. Between two big native cherry trees, their branches arching above me in the gray light of dawn like an open-air cathedral, I sunk my shovel. These were the same trees Marley and I had narrowly missed on our wild toboggan ride, and I said out loud, "This feels right." The spot was beyond where the bulldozers had spread the shale substrata, and the native soil was light and well drained, a gardener's dream. Digging went easily, and I soon had an oval hole roughly two by three feet around and four feet deep. I went inside and found all three kids up, sniffling quietly. Jenny had just told them.

Seeing them grieving-their first up-close experience with death-deeply affected me. Yes, it was only a dog, and dogs come and go in the course of a human life, sometimes simply because they become an inconvenience. It was only a dog, and yet every time I tried to talk about Marley to them, tears welled in my eyes. I told them it was okay to cry, and that owning a dog always ended with this sadness because dogs just don't live as long as people do. I told them how Marley was sleeping when they gave him the shot and that he didn't feel a thing. He just drifted off and was gone. Colleen was upset that she didn't have a chance to say a real good-bye to him; she thought he would be coming home. I told her I had said good-bye for all of us. Conor, our budding author, showed me something he had made for Marley, to go in the grave with him. It was a drawing of a big red heart beneath which he had written: "To Marley, I hope you know how much I loved you all of my life. You were always there when I needed you. Through life or death, I will always love you. Your brother, Conor Richard Grogan." Then Colleen drew a picture of a girl with a big yellow dog and beneath it, with spelling help from her brother, she wrote, "P.S.-I will never forget you."

I went out alone and wheeled Marley's body down the hill, where I cut an armful of soft pine boughs that I laid on the floor of the hole. I lifted the heavy body bag off the cart and down into the hole as gently as I could, though there was really no graceful way to do it. I got into the hole, opened the bag to see him one last time, and positioned him in a comfortable, natural way-just as he might be lying in front of the fireplace, curled up, head tucked around to his side. "Okay, big guy, this is it," I said. I closed the bag up and returned to the house to get Jenny and the kids.

As a family, we walked down to the grave. Conor and Colleen had sealed their notes back-to-back in a plastic bag, and I placed it right beside Marley's head. Patrick used his jackknife to cut five pine boughs, one for each of us. One by one, we dropped them in the hole, their scent rising around us. We paused for a moment, then all together, as if we had rehea.r.s.ed it, said, "Marley, we love you." I picked up the shovel and tossed the first scoop of dirt in. It slapped heavily on the plastic, making an ugly sound, and Jenny began to weep. I kept shoveling. The kids stood watching in silence.

When the hole was half filled, I took a break and we all walked up to the house, where we sat around the kitchen table and told funny Marley stories. One minute tears were welling in our eyes, the next we were laughing. Jenny told the story of Marley going bonkers during the filming of The Last Home Run The Last Home Run when a stranger picked up baby Conor. I told about all the leashes he had severed and the time he peed on our neighbor's ankle. We described all the things he had destroyed and the thousands of dollars he had cost us. We could laugh about it now. To make the kids feel better, I told them something I did not quite believe. "Marley's spirit is up in dog heaven now," I said. "He's in a giant golden meadow, running free. And his hips are good again. And his hearing is back, and his eyesight is sharp, and he has all his teeth. He's back in his prime-chasing rabbits all day long." when a stranger picked up baby Conor. I told about all the leashes he had severed and the time he peed on our neighbor's ankle. We described all the things he had destroyed and the thousands of dollars he had cost us. We could laugh about it now. To make the kids feel better, I told them something I did not quite believe. "Marley's spirit is up in dog heaven now," I said. "He's in a giant golden meadow, running free. And his hips are good again. And his hearing is back, and his eyesight is sharp, and he has all his teeth. He's back in his prime-chasing rabbits all day long."

Jenny added, "And having endless screen doors to crash through." The image of him barging his way oafishly through heaven got a laugh out of everyone.

The morning was slipping away, and I still needed to go to work. I went back down to his grave alone and finished filling the hole, gently, respectfully, using my boot to tamp down the loose earth. When the hole was flush with the ground, I placed two large rocks from the woods on top of it, then went inside, took a hot shower, and drove to the office.

In the days immediately after we buried Marley, the whole family went silent. The animal that was the amusing target of so many hours of conversation and stories over the years had become a taboo topic. We were trying to return our lives to normal, and speaking of him only made it harder. Colleen in particular could not bear to hear his name or see his photo. Tears would well in her eyes and she would clench her fists and say angrily, "I don't want to talk about him!"

I resumed my schedule, driving to work, writing my column, coming home again. Every night for thirteen years he had waited for me at the door. Walking in now at the end of the day was the most painful part of all. The house seemed silent, empty, not quite a home anymore. Jenny vacuumed like a fiend, determined to get up the bucketsful of Marley fur that had been falling out in ma.s.sive clumps for the past couple of years, insinuating itself into every crevice and fold. Slowly, the signs of the old dog were being erased. One morning I went to put my shoes on, and inside them, covering the insoles, lay a carpet of Marley fur, picked up by my socks from walking on the floors and gradually deposited inside the shoes. I just sat and looked at it-actually petted it with two fingers-and smiled. I held it up to show Jenny and said, "We're not getting rid of him that easy." She laughed, but that evening in our bedroom, Jenny-who had not said much all week-blurted out: "I miss him. I mean I really, really really miss him. I ache-inside miss him." miss him. I ache-inside miss him."

"I know," I said. "I do, too."

I wanted to write a farewell column to Marley, but I was afraid all my emotion would pour out into a gushy, maudlin piece of self-indulgence that would only humiliate me. So I stuck with topics less dear to my heart. I did, however, carry a tape recorder with me, and when a thought came to me, I would get it down. I knew I wanted to portray him as he was and not as some impossibly perfect reincarnation of Old Yeller or Rin Tin Tin, as if there were any danger of that. So many people remake their pets in death, turning them into supernatural, n.o.ble beasts that in life did everything for their masters except fry eggs for breakfast. I wanted to be honest. Marley was a funny, bigger-than-life pain in the a.s.s who never quite got the hang of the whole chain-of-command thing. Honestly, he might well have been the world's worst-behaved dog. Yet he intuitively grasped from the start what it meant to be man's best friend.