raining cats and dogs
I’m exhausted but only sleep for approximately three hours. I start googling — never a good idea at 3 a.m. — and finally tell myself that I don’t need to be an expert in the Serious Thing by morning.
We’re in the home stretch of an emotionally intense trip to and from Philly when Springsteen’s “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” shuffles onto my Spotify. I laugh at the metaphor happening in real time; we’ve been driving through on-and-off storms, literally and figuratively. I tell my girl, next to me in the passenger seat, to take a picture.
Wednesday, July 14, 11:28 a.m.
College Girl and I will soon be headed to Philly for a Celebration of Life. The Husband has had the same group of three close friends since grade school. We’re talking 40+ years. The kind of friends who are woven into the fabric of your life. The kind of friends who your kids refer to as aunt and uncle. That kind. In 2018, one of these friends was diagnosed with ALS; he died last June, in the early months of the pandemic.
I’m at work, putting in a half day before hitting the road, when my phone buzzes with a text. It’s my own best friend. We refer to each other as sisters, as we have since we met in the 4th grade. She also falls into the small group of Friends Who My Kids Call Aunt and Uncle. We have plans to meet for dinner. I’ll hop off the Pennsylvania Turnpike at her exit, we’ll enjoy a nice meal with our girls, and I’ll continue on to my mom’s. We’re both looking forward to it because we haven’t seen each other for 18 months. (As it is, we only get together once, maybe twice a year when I’m back in Philly.) The Celebration of Life has me on edge, tense and jumpy, so a nice dinner with my best friend will be a good diversion. But she needs to cancel, isn’t feeling well. Huh, I think, she must be really sick because this is unusual. I text back saying that the main thing is to rest and feel better. I say I’ll check in with her later.
College Girl and I hit the road. The Husband calls so I can listen into a Zoom doctor’s appointment with College Boy. I drive the five hours to Philly, laughing with my girl as Jonathan Van Ness of Queer Eye narrates his memoir, Over the Top. (We needed a funny book to calm my nerves and this absolutely hit the spot.) We stop at my mother-in-law’s for an impromptu dinner then spend the night at my mom and stepdad’s house.
Thursday, July 15, 10 a.m.
I need to leave for the Celebration of Life in an hour. I’m not dressed or showered. Instead, I’m at the kitchen table writing. I’ve been working on a personal essay about our friend for a few months now. I don’t know the format of this event and I haven’t been asked to speak but if there’s an opportunity to do so, I want to be prepared. I reach for my phone to look up the lyrics to “Guiding Light” by Mumford & Sons, and realize I’ve left it in the bedroom.
I’ve missed a text from my best friend/sister.
Call me before you leave to go home.
I call immediately and her husband answers.
This can’t be good.
And it isn’t.
Time stops.
We are now dealing with a Serious Thing.
I tell him that as soon as the Celebration is over, I’ll come up to the hospital. It’s in Allentown, more than an hour away from the Celebration. I’m shaking as I call The Husband, tell College Girl we’re probably not going home tonight. I marvel at the interconnectedness of life; had it not been for our friend’s memorial, we wouldn’t have even been in Philly at this crucial moment.
Thursday afternoon, noon – 4 p.m.
The Celebration of Life is a three hour roller coaster of emotions. It’s the most perfect tribute — heartbreakingly funny and sad, brutally ironic, so many laughs and tears, hugs from people I haven’t seen for nearly a decade. People tell hilarious stories, some I’ve heard several times, others that are new. Everyone should have a memorial like this. A text arrives at 1:52 p.m. and I step out of the banquet room, call my boss and tell her I’m not going to be in work tomorrow as planned. “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down starts playing, a photo montage with our smiling friend is onscreen and I am wrecked, my daughter holding me as I sob uncontrollably.
It takes nearly an hour to say goodbye.
Thursday evening, 5:13 p.m.
After an hour and a half drive to Allentown, we arrive at the hospital, are escorted back to the ER.
We wait for results. For next steps.
Sometime around 8 p.m., College Girl and I leave to find a hotel and get some dinner. Our hotel is right across the street from Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom. There’s the roller coaster, the Talon, that’s visible from my sister’s hospital bed. It is apparently the tallest and longest inverted roller coaster in the Northeast.
This inverted roller coaster offers a unique experience by spinning you around the outside of the track with your feet free to dangle anxiously through the air. Take on incredible twists and turns and several “near-miss” elements that create the illusion of soaring frighteningly close to the ground.
Riders will plunge into a twelve-foot trench then soar outward as if traveling around a loop. At the top of the loop, while upside down, riders twist back 180 degrees so that their feet are once again pointed towards the ground.
I’m exhausted but only sleep for approximately three hours. I start googling — never a good idea at 3 a.m. — and finally tell myself that I don’t need to be an expert in the Serious Thing by morning. I drift off for a short round of restless sleep. Every time I wake up, it takes a few seconds before I remember where I am and why before I start crying again.
Friday, July 16, 9 a.m.
We get breakfast and head back over to the hospital. We know a little more now, but not much. The head doctor is in the operating room; he’s scheduled to come by between 1-2 p.m. He does, and we all like him very much. At one point, questions are asked, decision are needed. What would you do if this was your sister? I ask. He replies, I would ask her what she wants to do and with that I know he’s a good guy. A plan is made. Surgery will be Tuesday.
I don’t want to leave, but College Girl and I start the five hour drive home. A traffic jam, some torrential rain, more Jonathan Van Ness, three hours of my 73-hour-long Favorites playlist on Spotify, and I finally pull into the garage after 8 p.m. I sleep for more than eight hours.
Saturday, July 17, noon – 5 p.m.
Earlier in the week (which seems like a year ago now), College Girl made reservations for us to visit The Black Cat Market in Lawrenceville. She’s been wanting to go for awhile and weekend reservations are hard to come by. I’m physically and emotionally exhausted and getting back into my car is the last thing I want to do, but this is an important milestone in my girl’s grieving process for our cat who died in February 2020. We’re not going to adopt a cat (spoiler alert: we didn’t). Our mission is to get our feline fix and play with them.
It’s a rainy day and most of the cats are napping — I envy them — so our visit is uneventful. We make our way back home in yet another torrential storm. I turn on our street and right at the crest of a hill I hit the brakes. In the middle of the road there’s a small dog, drenched to the bone, walking haphazardly and with a limp, and dangerously in the path of potential cars. College Girl hollers that we have to help the dog, we just have to, someone’s definitely going to hit him, he’s so small….
I pull over and while she’s trying to wrangle the dog into the car, I’m posting an update to our neighborhood Facebook group. The dog seems scared and well-versed in stranger danger; she won’t cooperate. And she’s small in size but a total chunkster; this is quite a well-fed pooch and College Girl can barely lift her. The dog makes her way to a house across the street and sits on the porch, looking expectantly at the front door. There’s no answer when we knock. A neighbor comes out and says that she thinks the dog belongs to the woman who lives at that house but she’s not sure. She thinks the dog’s name is Bella. I ask if she has a phone number for her neighbor. She doesn’t, but in true Pittsburgh fashion, she knows the daughter’s name, where she lives, and that the woman’s husband just died. I google the daughter, get a phone number, call. It’s not the right person. We’re not sure what to do next.
You’ll get some good karma points in heaven, says the neighbor, adding that she would take the dog but she walks with a cane. I could use some good karma right here on Earth, I say. It’s been a rough week. Tell me about it, the neighbor says. I was in Walmart during the storm and the power went out and I had to leave $129 of groceries right there on the conveyer belt.
Oh, I can top that, I say. I was at a memorial service in Philly and while I was getting ready, I found out my best friend has A Serious Thing. The neighbor gasps, is silent.
College Girl is impatient for me to stop talking. She suggests taking the dog to our former vet to see if she is microchipped. The neighbor gives us a blanket for the dog. I text The Husband who is worried because we had texted him to open the garage door (it’s been problematic) and then we don’t show up. I tell him we’re headed to the vet with a strange dog to see if it is microchipped. His worry turns to exasperation with College Girl and her tendency to rescue every creature she comes across. He says we should not have gotten involved. I say that I am on my last nerve and after the past 30 hours, can barely think straight.
I pull up to the vet’s office — which is now an empty storefront. They’ve moved. Fortunately, they are just a few hundred yards up the road. The dog is indeed microchipped and named Bella. The microchip service tries to call the owner. No answer. I’m now convinced the owner is dead in the house. I ask the vet what we should do, and she suggests keeping Bella for a few hours, maybe overnight if the owner can’t be located. College Girl — now crying — starts calling her friends to see if anyone has a cage. Nobody does. I can’t think straight; at one point I holler that I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with this shit.
En route home, we stop by Bella’s house again. No answer, and now I definitely don’t have a good feeling about this, but there’s a package at the door so at least we now have a name. I google and discover an obituary for the woman’s husband; he died just two months ago, had the same birthday and was almost the same age as my father-in-law, and their fathers had the same name. It is a sign from the universe that we were meant to rescue this dog.
Through the wonder of social media (and, you know, Pittsburgh) someone knows the owner’s daughter and soon College Girl’s phone is ringing; it’s Bella’s owner and 20 minutes after the call they are reunited in our garage. Bella’s an indoor only dog; she accidentally got out when the woman was leaving the house and she didn’t see her. She thanks us profusely. We would have been heartbroken to lose her, our new friend says.
This Week
It takes me several days to regain my equilibrium. My sister has her surgery, it goes incredibly well, and she’s currently making a great recovery. At work I’m sitting outside on my lunch hour. It’s a gorgeous sunny day, perfect Pittsburgh weather. I feel like I can breathe for the first time in a week.