Front page Vallejo Times Herald article today mentioned the five souls I lost in the fire and the pet grieving events I was already actively trying to facilitate with Kathryn D. Marocchino and Carlene Coury. Hopefully this will trigger more donations in their memory in the link listed at the bottom of the article. I do like knowing that their memory will help other cats and dogs find homes and have better lives.
Category Archives: Memoriam
The Loss of Five Pets at Once
Apparently I’m not the only one in the world to be out of the home and lose FIVE animals to a fire, as unfathomable as the thought is to have lived through. I’ve started reading this book recommended by pet grieving expert Kathryn of the Nikki Hospice Foundation who happens to be a lovely neighbor I adore and who even speaks Italian with me. Some of you know that I was working with Carlene and Kathryn and others about the periodic pet grieving gatherings that we could facilitate, particularly in association with the Humane Society of the North Bay, but I never dreamed I would soon be the “poster child” for such things.
Got the ashes
I was touched at the paw prints for each of them. I’m still not sleeping all night, despite the comfortable surroundings.
Can beauty come out of ashes?
That’s a line from a beautiful Celine Dion song.
I got a call from the veterinarian’s office downtown. I was told in the chaos of the fire that they would cremate all five dogs that were killed in the fire individually for free, which is very touching. I think one of my neighbors arranged that for me. The remains of the last of the five are expected at their office tomorrow, so I’ll have to pick them all up. I will make sure someone drives me because I’m not sure how I’m going to handle it.
Five Souls Lost in Our House Fire
I want a mulligan. Hit rewind. I didn’t ask for this next chapter. Fuck the universe. Most of my family was taken in minutes. Those dogs deserved a dignified ending in our arms at the end of a natural life. I’m peering around for silver linings.
My dear friend Steve Guy wrote on Facebook for me:
IN MOURNING TODAY
Early this morning (January 18) around 8:00 AM, Joe Hayden was returning from a veterinary visit to the house on Wellfleet in Glen Cove, Vallejo, when he saw indications of a house fire. The house went up in smoke and flames and it looks like most of the interior burned or has smoke damage. Despite having access to the yard we assume the fire blocked the dogs’ exit or confused them. Joe and his neighbor, Jeanette, who was traveling with Joe at the time, attempted to rescue the dogs, but they were unable to get past the fire.
FIVE of the 7 dogs passed away from smoke inhalation.
Cappy, Matty, Pancho, Polar and Snowball passed away from smoke inhalation.
Peaches and Snoopy escaped. Peaches has been returned to her original family. Snoopy and Joe will be staying at Greg and Steve’s until Joe can figure out insurance claims and other details. The house is not inhabitable and it will be months until repair and restoration can make it livable again.
Shando Hayden is safe in Las Vegas.
Worst Day of My Life
I’m a broken man.
January 18, 2024, is the worst day of my life because I was not there to protect five innocents who could not speak for themselves or understand the danger. It was the worst day of my life because I could not see it coming and say goodbye like I did with other pets and even my own family members who had illnesses before they passed away.
I have asked people who want to do something to give to HSNB.org/donate in memory of the Hayden Dogs that perished while I was out helping my friend and neighbor Jeannette take two foster dogs to get neutered.
My house was on fire twelve hours after I attended a meeting on (wild) fire prevention as President of our community Association. I’m staying at the home of very close friends with Shando (who flew back from where he was in Las Vegas) and one of the two surviving dogs for as long as I need to. The other surviving dog was already intended to be returned to her family of origin this weekend. I’m glad I did not have to devastate them with notification of a sixth death of an innocent life. That morning Shando was out of town so his trauma is different. He is here helping put things together as we figure out our new life, which will be very different. I already applied to lease the house next door to our home as it has been on the market. My neighbors, including the retired fire chief who lives immediately across from me and his wife and so many others on my block and the cul de sac behind me, have been incredible through the process, and I have friends who are claims adjusters and renovation experts. I’m being overwhelmed by the Vallejo community’s generosity and emotional support. I suspect my homeowner’s insurance will be comparable to what my mother had and help me rebuild, so it’s taking me some mental adjustment to say yes to having people bring me physical things as I am fixated on mourning the souls lost.
This is literally the sixth fire my family has suffered in my life.
Three of them were on base in an apartment building on Governor’s Island when I was a military brat. The apartment across the hall, with adjoining walls, had a pyromaniac kid. We had to evacuate down the stairs from the 11th floor three times into the cold New York nights.
One of the fires was on Staten Island New York in an adjacent townhouse when my daughter was an infant. Infuriatingly a man with emphysema fell asleep while continuing to smoke and almost killed us all from one floor beneath us, which partly explains my passion for tobacco control).
Then there was my mother’s fluorescent garage light from the 1950’s causing her home to be destroyed in 2016. My mother, brother, and nephew moved in with Shando and me at that point and my poor mother was diagnosed and died of ovarian cancer within a few months before the house could even be restored. There’s a lot more to that tragic story, but my point is that I’m now a veteran of going through the long and arduous process of a rebuild/renovation.
Because of all of this history, I specifically remembered turning off and unplugging appliances as I did ROUTINELY when I left at 5:30 am that morning of January 18, 2024. I did not allow open flames in my house and I had close calls with my daughter scorching the blinds with her curling iron when she was a teenager. If anyone fears being in another fire, it’s me. In none of those fires did I lose a single soul, though, because my mother’s death was NOT related to the fire in her house.
I dedicate countless hours to saving these creatures from an untimely death, so I can’t help but feel I let them down. Yes I know I gave them good lives, which is well documented. I’m looking for silver linings and I hope some things will improve in time. Shando and I are very lucky to be physically unscathed, although I do have some injuries from throwing garden furniture into one of the sliding doors and trying with neighbors to extinguish the back deck before the firemen got there.
My babies died, I’m told by the fire inspector after an extensive investigation, because of a bad extension cord (officially an accident so Shando and I can slow down on beating ourselves up with guilt) connected to a RECLINING COUCH that was only two years old.
Many of you know how much I love my home and garden. I post extensively on my blog and even toyed with the idea of having my garden in the Vallejo Garden Tour one year. The loss of the material things, including many sentimental items from my parents and grandparents that survived my mom’s own fire in Hayward eight years ago, is gone, but it is my innocent loving canines (mostly seniors and one five-year-old and two of whom were BLIND) who deserved a more dignified ending and certainly with me there with them. Thank FUCK they only suffered inhalation. I made a point to look at their bodies in the chaos and none of them were burned. A local veterinarian apparently agreed to cremate them all for free while I was still in a daze after some confusion. I think one of my amazing neighbors negotiated that on the spot.
There are many more details I’m missing, but I wanted to get some information out.
PLEASE remember to give to HSNB.org site in MEMORY of the HAYDEN FIVE – Capulet, Snowball, Pancho, Polar, and Matty.
I’m a broken man with five family members lost. Our babies did not deserve to die. I believe it was a six-alarm fire. We are overwhelmed with the community’s generosity and we’re working together to help one another through this loss. Our love for our family and each other cannot be denied no matter what happens, but for now, if there isn’t something specific that you can do for us and if you want to do something, helping other homeless dogs and cats would mean so much to us.
This is my friend Barbara and me with the two miracle survivors, Peaches and Snoopy:
33 years since Dad died of Nicotine Addiction
Today is a grim 33rd anniversary of my father dying at age fifty from a painful, elongated death from his tobacco/nicotine addiction. I’m planning to write extensively about the gory details at some juncture. Like so many in countless families, my dad was gone too soon. Handed loose cigarettes while growing up in Hawaii at age 12, little did he know that he would grow up to die at the same young age that his mother would.
My dad and me:
At 55 I can safely say that my siblings and I have ensured that the “family tradition” of being addicted to nicotine and dying at 50 does not continue with us, since we remember how he suffered firsthand. Thankfully none of our kids smoke, but that doesn’t mean they were not targeted. They are definitely surrounded by their peers who have now normalized vaping in front of others. I am proud to be working harder than ever with my activism, one which was triggered when Dad died. I could think of no more noble cause at the time I entered law school than to save as many lives as I could, but Big Tobacco is still trying to addict new generations with vapes, even having the audacity to suggest they are smoking cessation devices! If that’s the case, why do some e-cigarettes have the equivalent of 400 cigarettes?
The biggest drug dealers in the world are making profits off of 22% of the WORLD population. Does this CARTEL deserve that? How many needless, preventable early deaths will they be responsible for throughout history? There is no depth to which this one industry will go, and yet it continues to prosper off the blood money of our families and now our youth. Big Tobacco is the enemy. Ask me how you can help.
Can you even tell which of these are vape pens? Neither can parents or teachers when they are consumed IN CLASS.
When a tree falls in the forest…Timber 2005-2023
It’s a sad day in our home. We lost our most senior dog, Timber, who was well over 18. Several days ago she must have had a stroke. Suddenly, she was no longer able to use her hind legs, so we said goodbye to her this morning after making her as comfortable as we could in her remaining hours.
Some of you may recall that she survived cancer over six years ago, at which point we thought we’d just have a matter of weeks or months of palliative care, but the surgery to remove the huge tumor from her leg was a success. Indeed, she thrived right up until very recently.
We’re happy we were able to give her a much longer life than she would have had when my sister’s in-laws were stricken with their own immense health issues about seven years ago. There had been talk among those extended family members of “taking her to the pound,” to which I said, “Hell no…not on my watch.” I had known her from various holiday gatherings since she was just a puppy. We are so grateful to have so many pictures and videos of her from many vacations and trips to beaches and parks these past seven years.
In hindsight, this video of her tongue acting like this at the beginning of September might have been a sign of her having a stroke, cute as it is:
Montague Gilligan Hayden, In Memoriam
May 18, 2008 – August 7, 2023
More commonly known as “Monte,” the Capulet (Cappy) to his Montague is now without her counterpart.
Born in Friant, California (near Fresno), I had this amazingly athletic dog pretty much his entire life, which was more than 15 years, except for the first few weeks. He was extraordinary in many ways.
He went on countless vacations and beaches with me from Seattle to San Diego. He also traveled to Phoenix and many other places inland over the years. For the first three years of his life, he was the only dog I had, and he loved it that way.
I have footage of him pulling blackberries into his mouth with his paw.
He would dive into any body of water to chase a tennis ball, a feat he learned watching my friends’ big dogs in Oakland. Many people asked me what kind of dog he was emerging with a ball in his mouth he had retrieved from the bay, the pool, the lake, the river, etc.
Upon returning from vacation yesterday, Monte did not respond to our entering the home as he normally would have, with elation and energy. Upon re-investigating his difficulty eating and inviting our mobile veterinarian over, we found a huge splenic tumor in our 15-year-old Yorkie. An emergency 24-hour trip later resulted in a confirmation that there was nothing operable and even if it was benign, it was pressing on his major organs. He had lost 50% of his body mass in just the last few months, despite medications to stimulate his appetite and quite a variety of changes in the food we prepared to appeal to him.
In 2008 I implored my daughter to go to a shelter to find a dog, not even knowing what I now know about the transactional problems with going to a breeder. She was hellbent that she wanted a male Yorkshire Terrier. I was basically bribing her with the dog of her choice to move to California where I’m from after raising her in New York, where she was born. I desperately missed her the year she went to high school in New Jersey near her mom. Before that, I had always had primary custody of my daughter, so I was willing to bend my principles to get her back. She did a lot of research and seemed very sure of what she wanted, probably because she saw some celebrity with a Yorkie.
So Monte started out technically as her dog. I wasn’t naive, so I knew it was quite likely I’d be taking more responsibility, and that was fine, as she bounced around the country after getting out of high school. I joked all this time that she just wanted him for a Myspace photo op. A week after she got him, I took over the potty training and everything else, and my daughter assisted for a while.
He was probably in a lot of pain these past few weeks, although he hid it. We’re so glad he survived our being gone that week. One of our amazing dog-sitters said he waited for us. The tumor could have burst at any point with a blunt hit or fall in hindsight, and that would be disastrously painful. Ironically, I was invited to my first online pet loss support group today, but I decided it would not be healthy for me to join minutes after he was put to rest, which turned out to be the timing that was convenient for the mobile veterinarian.
Ironically our 18-year-old Pomeranian-Chihuahua mix has really bounced back and we were worried about leaving for vacation with her being ill about a month ago. Her fur is now once again lustrous, and she’s gained some weight, eating heartily daily and still quite ambulatory. One never knows with these things. She herself survived cancer at least six years ago when a huge tumor was removed from her leg.
Below are the last video and pictures I took of this tough little guy. You cannot tell how skeletal he is because he has fur, but he was indeed emaciated and his eyes were glossed over. He moves slowly and it was hard to keep him hydrated and fed. He could not even go up a single step and mostly had to lay around in his last days. I’m sure it was uncomfortable for such a normally frenetic animal. He had hardly ever even been ill in all of his days. In these he is on my desk while I work so I could be as close to him as possible and keep an eye on him.
Morbid Anniversary
Today makes seven years since I lost my mom to fucking cancer (ovarian). She was only 73, so she would have been 80 this December. 
I was named after my mother, Giuseppina, and she was named after my Nonno, Giuseppe. I was a huge momma’s boy. We spoke all day in chat when I was at work for YEARS, not to mention at least a few calls a day even when she was visiting Italy or I was living on the East Coast.
The guy with the beer in the picture below is my dad, of course. We lost him way too early from his smoking. He was only 50, so my mom was widowed at age 47. Both my parents died before one of their own parents, so I had the most unfortunate duty of consoling my Nonna (in my mom’s case) and my grandfather (in my dad’s case) over the loss of their offspring. Continents and decades apart, I heard them both scream about how it should have been them instead.
