After friends wrote kind notes in response to my Roxy farewell, I wanted to share my thanks, a clarification and one more story. Here’s a note of gratitude I posted on Facebook:

Friend, you may know I have ZERO belief in any after, beyond, or other-li-ness. No stars n' heavens for me; I'm all about the pavement...as fed up as I am with pounding it!

But I do appreciate, and not just tolerate, friends’ shared sentiments about next worlds, reunions, etc., or what Michael called, after euthanizing the Siamese cat, “that big kitty litter in the sky”.

So I have a coda to this week's events that might appeal to those given to practicality or prophecy alike.

After the dog's final trip to the NJ vet, toasting her memory, driving through Manhattan on to Bushwick with Saul, and then getting home to the other side of Brooklyn around 11pm, I parked the car on a commercial avenue, a frigid ten minutes' walk from our apartment in Bay Ridge. On such a bitter cold night the street seemed especially empty; there was no one. Except, right next to my parking space, a barrel-chested dog in a thick canvas jacket was attached by her leash to a bike rack. She was waiting and whimpering while her owner, an elderly woman bundled into a hooded jacket wrapped with several scarves, picked through some boxes outside a newsstand. (Ok, maybe the woman was my age, but a whole lot worse for wear. ) I don't think the pair were homeless, just living lean.

I offered the red plaid jacket Roxy had worn just hours ago. The woman took it, along with the large square dog bed I had in the back of my car and Roxy's newish flower print collar. She asked what had become of my dog and shared condolences. She'd been there before, she said. It felt good to walk home in the wind toward the river having already given Roxy's few items directly to a Pitbull named Susie who'd be around for the long New York winter.

Thanks again.