Tuesday night I attended a wake at Scotto Funeral Home in Carroll Gardens. The mother of Carmen, the woman who adopted Annie the Min-Pin from my rescue, passed away after battling Alzheimer’s Disease for the past 18 years. For the last twelve of those difficult years Carmen was her caretaker. Her mom died in hospice at home, the same home in Brooklyn where Carmen was born and raised.
At the wake Carmen told me she had eight siblings, six of which her mom buried over the years. Some of them as young as babies.
My son is 20 months old so it was difficult to swallow those words and to fathom that kind of grave loss. It was also tough to look at the coffin, which was open. Carmen’s mom was a skinny skeleton who looked nothing like the heavyset smiley woman in the photos that decorated the funeral parlor. She wore a cotton pink nightie with the word Brooklyn scrawled across it– and that’s what I will remember the most, I think: that Carmen gave the coroner her mom’s comfortable around-the-house nightie to dress her in, as opposed to her Sunday best.
It’s weird to think I walked away from a funeral feeling comfort and not sadness. And perhaps a bit of reassurance too, that one of my dogs landed herself the kind of people who will stick with her and take care of her until the very end.
Annie now called Jackie, leans on her bonded housemate Zero