My daughter Molly set this page up for me in July when she was home, and she showed me how to put words on it from the computer Jim bought last Christmas and mostly uses for solitaire. I am fifty-five. Jim and I have been in this house thirty years and the children are grown and gone. What we have left in the house is Barney, who is fourteen and was supposed to be a golden retriever. This journal is about him, mostly. Some of it turned out to be about my mother, who died in March. I didn't plan that part.

Sunday, September 26

Raked the back yard this afternoon. The big maple is just starting to turn and it dropped enough to make a real pile, the first one of the year. For fourteen years that dog lay down in the middle of the first leaf pile the minute it was a pile. You'd rake, he'd lie in it, you'd say "Barney, MOVE," and he'd roll over and show you his stomach, which was his answer to most questions. Today I raked it into a pile and it just stayed a pile.

The yard looks wrong. There's a path worn along the back fence where he walked the line every morning to make sure the Kowalskis' cat knew who was in charge. The grass will come back on it by spring, I suppose. I don't want it to.

Around suppertime I couldn't find Jim, and he was sitting on the back step with the orange ball in his hands, the one the squeaker died in years ago. He didn't say anything and I didn't either. I sat down next to him. After a while he said, "He'd have wanted that pile." That is the most Jim has said about it all week. His family doesn't talk about things; they fix them. There isn't anything here to fix, and I think that's what's so hard for him.

The leash is still on the hook by the back door. Neither of us has said a word about moving it.

A lady in Ohio wrote me this week about her beagle, who she lost in June. Thank you. I read your letter out loud to Jim at the kitchen table, and he got up and went out to the garage for a little while, which is how I know it got to him.

Sunday, September 19

Yesterday.

Kevin drove in from Rochester Friday after work and Molly's plane got in from Atlanta at eleven that night. Barney heard Kevin's car in the driveway and lifted his head and thumped his tail on the floor, which he had not done for me all week. Kids. They leave you for college and a job in another state and the dog still likes them best.

Saturday was sunny and warm, the last warm day, it felt like. We carried him out on his blanket and put him in the grass by the lilac where he could see the fence and the squirrels and supervise. Jim cooked a whole pound of bacon and we fed it to him a piece at a time. Fourteen years we yelled at that dog about bacon. He stole it off plates, off the counter, once out of the pan while it was still sizzling, and yesterday we just handed it to him and he took every piece so gently, like a gentleman, like he had never stolen a thing in his life.

Molly lay on the blanket with her face in his neck and told him the whole story of how she picked him out of a cardboard box at a farm stand out past Camillus in 1985, which he has heard before, but he didn't mind.

Dr. Amato came to the house at two. I didn't know vets did that. She was so kind that I can't write about it yet. We were all in the family room, on the floor, with him on his old blanket, and his head was in Kevin's lap and Jim had his hand on his side. It was quiet and he wasn't scared. That's all I am going to put here.

Jim and Kevin buried him out back under the lilac, where he dug his famous hole every single spring from 1986 on. For once nobody yelled at anybody for digging under the lilac.

Molly flies back tonight. The house is going to be very big.

Wednesday, September 15

We took him to Dr. Amato this afternoon. He hasn't gotten up on his own since Sunday and he won't eat anything but what I hold in my hand. She sat right down on the floor of the exam room with him, which is why we love her, and she was quiet for a long time with her hand on him.

Everybody tells you, "You'll know." I didn't know. I had to ask her. I said, "Is it time?" and she said, "I think he's telling you." Jim asked about a stronger pill, and she explained it to him very patiently, and he nodded, and I could see him understand.

In the car Jim said, "Saturday. So the kids can come." Just like that, with his hands on the wheel at ten and two. I called Kevin and Molly when we got home. Molly cried. Kevin was quiet and then said he'd leave Friday after work.

And then I did the dumbest thing. I went to the phone to call my mother. Six months, and I still pick up the phone to call her. She'd have said, "Patricia, he's a dog, he had a wonderful life," and then she'd have cried harder than me. That woman fed him ham under the table every Easter for fourteen years and denied it to the end.

Sunday, September 12

He didn't get up for his supper tonight. I lay down next to him on the kitchen floor with the radio on for about an hour. Jim stepped over us to get the milk, and then he came back and lay down too. Two old fools and an old dog on the linoleum. More tomorrow, maybe.

Tuesday, September 7

The kids have been calling a lot. Molly calls every night now "to talk to Barney," and I hold the phone down to his ear, and his tail goes twice on the floor, thump thump, and she says she can hear it all the way in Atlanta. Kevin calls Sunday nights like always, but now the first question is about the dog and the second one is about us.

Barney can't do the stairs anymore, not since the middle of August. The first night he stood at the bottom and cried. He has slept on the rag rug at the foot of our bed for fourteen years and he wasn't about to stop now. So every night one of us carries him up. Mostly Jim, and Jim's back is not what it was either, so I stand behind them on the stairs like a spotter at the Y. Last week Jim built a ramp off the back steps out of plywood and some of that indoor-outdoor carpet. Jim is a man who shows his love with a circular saw.

Molly asked me to write down Barney's crimes before we forget any, so here is the official record:

• The Easter ham, 1988. Entire. Off the counter, while we were at church. He was a Catholic in his own way.
• Kevin's retainer. Twice. The orthodontist said he had never had a patient lose one to the same dog twice.
• One pound of butter, wrapper and all.
• The mailman's meatball sub, off the seat of the mail truck. We paid for it. We also switched to leaving the mail truck alone.
• Every tulip bulb I planted from 1986 to 1994, at which point I gave up and planted daylilies.
• Escaped in 1993 and was brought home by a policeman who found him sitting politely at the back door of the Italian bakery on the corner, waiting for his regular order.

He is lying on my feet right now while I type this, snoring. He always did sound like Jim's uncle Walt.

Monday, August 30

We finally brought the last boxes from Mother's apartment home to our garage. The building gave us till the end of August and Jim and I made it with one day to spare. Most of it went to the church rummage sale. What's left is her good dishes, the photo albums, and a shoebox of her recipe cards that I was not ready to look at.

I looked at them today. I sat on the garage floor with the door open and read them one at a time. Her handwriting. "Nut roll, Patsy's favorite." She underlined "favorite" twice. I don't know why that one did it, but I sat there and bawled over a nut roll.

And here came Barney, all the way from the kitchen, down the two steps into the garage, which he is not supposed to do anymore, and he put his big gray chin on my knee and sighed at me. Getting up off the floor is hard for him now. He got up for that.

When Mother was in the hospital in March I'd come home at ten o'clock at night, worn out, and he'd be waiting right at the door. He'd sniff my coat all over for the hospital smell, and then he'd lean his whole weight on my legs. I did most of my crying for her with that dog leaning on me. I don't know who I'm going to lean on next. Jim, I suppose. Jim is not much of a leaner.

Saturday, August 14

Vet this morning. Dr. Amato says it's his hips, which I knew, and his back legs, which I knew, and that at fourteen a big dog is "doing very well," which I choose to take as a compliment to my cooking. She's put him on Rimadyl, the arthritis pill for dogs, at a price that would make my father sit up in his grave. She listened to his heart a long time and said his heart was good. I could have told her that for free.

While we waited at the counter to pay, he managed to get his nose into the little display of free cat treats by the register and ate two packets before Jim noticed. Old, but not reformed. The girl at the desk said not to worry about it. I left a dollar anyway.

Tuesday, August 3

Well, here I am. Molly says people keep journals on the Internet and strangers read them. I said who on earth wants to read about an old lady and an old dog. She said, "Mom, you'd be surprised." So we'll see.

Barney came home in the summer of 1985 out of a cardboard box of puppies at a farm stand. Molly was thirteen and Kevin was sixteen and they promised, the way all children promise, that they would walk him and feed him and I would never have to do a thing. Kevin left for college two years later and Molly three years after that, and the kids' dog became my dog, which I understand is how it always goes.

He is fourteen now. His face is all white and he sleeps most of the day in the sun spot by the back door. The house got very quiet after the kids left, and quieter this spring after Mother. He's the one who is still here making noise. I just wanted to write some of it down while he is.