We’re so lucky to live right up the hill from this outstanding park on the Carquinez Strait, which connects the Sacramento delta with San Pablo Bay, which the Napa River pours into, and then San Francisco Bay and eventually the Pacific Ocean. It makes for great sunsets and the dogs love running around there.
Our dogs:
Guest dogs:
Growing up I always considered Zia Carla an aunt. Our families were so close and her story was so similar to my mother’s.
Carolina Fodero grew up in Catanzaro, Italy and, like my mom, met an American Coast Guard man named Bill in Calabria, moved all over the place after they got married together. Both had two sons, the first of which was named Joe. Both families lived on the Coast Guard base on Governor’s Island, New York, in southern California, and also in the San Francisco East Bay, where both families ended up settling.
I was always the lucky one because my brother and sister hardly knew their god-parents. Mine was more of a godmother to us all. Over the years my mom and Carla spoke constantly. Even when their ability to visit each other was limited, I tried to drive my mom to Carla’s house for regular visits. It was really tough on Carla when my Mom died from ovarian cancer five years ago. I honestly think Carla was closer to my mom than some of her own siblings back in Italy.
Before and after my mom died I regularly took my daughter to visit Carla and of course I had gone with my ex-wife, which I later found out was pregnant with our daughter in these pictures at Carla’s house. I even took a few of my boyfriends over the years. At first, I was hesitant to introduce them to Carla because I knew she was very pious, but that was silly of me. She always embraced them without hesitation and it made me cry when she told them to “TAKE CARE OF MY GOD-SON!” What a woman!
While she actually survived Covid, she was yet another cancer victim (a sad further similarity to my mom), which makes me all the more determined to learn and fight for health equity, diminish carcinogens and try to encourage others to live healthier lives. I do believe we can all be living longer and better quality lives if we can use science to fight the toxins in our environment. I’m just so glad we had so many good years with someone who had an outspoken heart about her passions.
My husband Shando was, fortunately, able to spend a number of trips with Carla, and before Covid, Carla had some medical issues that had her in nursing facilities that happened to be very close to where I worked. I cherish the chances I had to visit her and I even took some video of Carla saying hello to my family in Italy. This was in 2019, so before Covid:
I was so happy to speak Italian with her as she was continuously surprised how much of it I still spoke. I think it was also a good exercise for her mind to speak both languages. I know it is for mine.
I cherish the pictures I have with her through the years. Here are some of them spanning from the 1960s (at my actual baptism where she is holding me) until just a few years ago:
Tucker had some health struggles this past week and he died around 4a.m. Pacific on April 18, 2021. He would have been 16 on May 7.
To be clear, I love all my dogs, but Tucker bonded to me like no other dog in my life. It wasn’t just like losing a dog, because I had become the focus of his world. He not only followed me from room to room, he always had to have a watch on me when possible, even after he lost an eye to glaucoma, was partially blind due to a cataract, and became deaf. Even more, he would do whatever he could — including perilously jumping in his younger days — to get next to me and become an almost permanent thigh flank when I was on the couch. He wasn’t just near me to be close to food. He was just home and most content to be next to me at all times I eventually realized.
I already had a boy and girl Yorkie when Shando and I got together in 2014. Soon after we got together, Shando got a call from his ex, with whom he had originally adopted Tucker and daughter, Bella. Shando’s ex had taken care of them for three years in the Central Valley and at that time could not. We agreed to take them for a few weeks; that was seven years ago.
Without any prompting, Tucker just started gravitating toward me and looking at me so lovingly. I don’t think I deserved it, but it was most endearing. I kept noticing that he would consistently leap out of other people’s arms (even Shando’s) just to get back to me as if I was the only human that mattered.
Home memorial for Tucker:
Tucker became less ambulatory this last year, even though we moved to a more dog-friendly house with fewer steps. He loved me holding him like a baby in the sun. I usually tried to protect his remaining eye with my own shadow, or turn him around so that he could feel the warm sun on his almost bald skin. The last few months we did a lot of that while birds flew in and out of the yard and the fountains dripped. There are certainly no regrets there.
Taking care of him recently did involve picking him up and putting him down. We no longer trusted him to go up the doggie stairs himself without injury, as his equilibrium was no longer the same. When he would wander the house we usually adorned him with male dog diapers in case he would pee with his head out the magnetic screen (thinking he was outside) when his piss stream was still inside the doorway. Poor guy thought he was house-trained, but not perfectly. That’s the peril of having a geriatric male elongated wiener dog/Dachshund I suppose.
Just a few weeks ago when I was not wearing socks, I was actually pretty annoyed with him that every moment I was not paying enough attention to him, he would incessantly lick my ankles to garner a response from me. I’m going to miss that now.
We made the right decision during Covid, difficult as it was, not to hospitalize him. He likely would have died among strangers, with tubes in him, and we probably wouldn’t have been able to see him again. Instead, the vet gave him pain meds to relax him one more night while we contemplated the best path forward. That night he died in his sleep between Shando and me. I woke up numerous times and heard him breathing somewhat heavily, but at some point I realized the top half of his body was already cold and his breathing had stopped completely. He looked so peaceful getting sleep in a choice location between his daddies. He was flanking me until the end, as it should have been. The vet had said he had such a strong heart he would have otherwise lived to twenty, but my little trooper is now out of all of his discomfort and pain.
Tucker made a huge impression on the last seven years of my life. I’m so glad we have innumerable pictures and video footage of him and the other dogs, including vacations we took with them to various vacation rentals, countless trips to the parks, lakes, ocean, and just around the house and backyard. I notice now that even when we were in unfamiliar locations, he was not one to run far from me and was almost always underfoot.
Indeed, over the past year, many have come to recognize him as the dog sleeping on my chest during Zoom meetings. So many commented on how zen he looked just laying there. Only Tucker cherished being held like a baby for extended periods of time. I don’t think any of our other dogs would tolerate or appreciate that. I surely will miss his weight on me and the warmth of his little body. Shando always mused about getting a pot-bellied pig as a pet, but I reminded him regularly that we had our pot-bellied Tucker.
Bella was with him her whole life. She looks a lot like him, but they have very different personalities. Bella did lick him a lot the night before he died, but that was common. I don’t know if she was able to pick up on the fact that he was dead the next morning when we let her sniff him, but she will surely notice he’s not there to cuddle with him in yin and yang formation next to my home office desk as they did most days. It’s frustrating that I can’t explain to her that her life will never be quite the same. Mine won’t either.
For the longest time, most people on Zoom remembered me like this (with Tucker):
