Today we ended Faith’s life. She was, according to the records, 19 years old.
She had cancer and while still able to go up and down the stairs, take short walks, and eat two square meals a day (her favorite 8 minutes of the day), the tumors were at a point of not just being an annoyance. They caused her pain, and it was clear that as they were now spreading quickly, there was more of that in her future. And so we made an appointment and drove her to the Vet in the Palisades. I was able to hold it together through the signing of release forms, and the initial wait in the entry, but when it was time to take her back, Gary and she went together for the last walk down the hall.
They tried to get her lay down on the floor, but she wanted to sit up, so Gary wrapped his arms around her and they administered the drug. He said she peacefully began to breathe more slowly, until she was no longer with him. He said she looked angelic. The doctor left him alone with her and he said he lost it, beginning to cry, his tears spilling down onto the front of his blue t-shirt like drops of heavy rain. When he came out of the building, I was waiting in the car, and while we knew we’d done the right thing, the strong thing, the best thing for her – it was so incredibly hard.
I considered myself a food lover: a zealous, open-minded, and
studious consumer of food. My tastes ran the gamut from Chex Mix to
Chez Panisse, and I felt this to be charmingly, almost wittily,
indiscriminate of me. I read cookbooks, restaurant reviews, and food
writing. I cooked. I baked. I ate out. I would have, without
hesitation, claimed to be well versed, at the top of my game even, in
the Art of Eating. 
We’d finally made it all the way to Park Slope, it was less than warm, and I’m pretty sure I had mascara on my forehead from frantically trying to fix my make-up on the subway. You can imagine my dismay when the only boy I really wanted to see on my trip to New York wasn’t even home. But we couldn’t just call him! It would be much better if we ‘just happened to be in the neighborhood’. “They can’t be far. Their car is here!” But how were we gonna kill an hour in the middle of residential nowhere in 20 degree weather? That’s when we found it. BAR TANO. A little haven of happiness with pressed tin walls and a zinc bar.
You gotta love a guy like my friend Howard. On Memorial Day Monday at 10:30 a.m., I called him in Santa Monica from my bed in Sherman Oaks and said, “Whatcha doing today?”