"Dog Years" by Danielle Shorr
Dog Years
On a wall in my living room sits a collection of framed pictures, paintings, and art. In one print, a bear holds a mandolin. In another, an opossum sits, jaw open at its widest, with a banjo in hand. There’s a photoshopped portrait of my dog as a decorated war general, another of one of my chickens dressed as a farmer. There’s a clock that chirps a different bird’s call on the hour and a shadowbox of pinned butterflies. Towards the top center of the wall, there’s a canvas printed picture of two husky puppies sitting on a restaurant bar top, looking directly into the camera. The dogs are unbearably cute, slumped together with puppy-like-playfulness, one with darker features and one with light, bottles of hard liquor lined up colorfully in the background. In the left corner of the picture, you can just barely make out the restaurant name printed on a business card holder. “Pasta Cucina,” it reads. The picture looks like a stock photo, a perfectly set up capture of two adorable creatures in an unlikely setting. Who took it is a mystery, but that restaurant, those dogs, were my uncle’s.
On my right thigh is a tattoo of a husky, an intricate portrait I got done for my 19th birthday. I appreciate the comments I get on my wolf tattoo, because even though it isn’t a wolf, a compliment is still a compliment. Huskies do look a lot like wolves, and if I were to see a wolf in the actual wilderness, I might, too, be mistaken.
The tattoo has incredible detail, with ink strokes that look as delicate as hair. I got it, partly because of my love for animals and partly because it just looks cool. When people ask what it means, I tell them it means I wanted a tattoo of a husky, and although partially true, that answer isn’t the whole of it. In a bid to end the conversation sooner, I don’t go further into it. This is a story for a longer day.
Pasta Cucina opened its doors at 2400 Lincoln Avenue in Chicago in the summer of 1991, a month after my parents got married, and a little over two years after my father’s father died from lung cancer at the age of 52. Italian by name, the restaurant served a bit of everything, run not by an Italian, but a Jewish man who learned to cook at Washburne Trade culinary school, the place he attended after a second senior year of high school. Having worked in the back of some of the city’s most beloved restaurants, he finally had one of his own.
On the best days, Ricky did everything, speaking to each guest that stepped through the glass paneled doors, handling the bulk of the kitchen work, and managing his staff. On the menu, his famous whisky bread pudding and an appetizer of baked brie with apricot jam that my grandma would call ahead to order. He was a boss lacking all of the undesired attributes most often possessed by those in charge. Waitresses valued and respected him, back of the house, too. A cook whose bicycle had been stolen outside of the restaurant, came into work one day to find he’d been bought a new one.
The place had a seven-year run, slightly longer than the restaurant industry’s median of four and a half years. By the time the doors had closed, the best days had become few and far between. Ricky came down in the early mornings to prepare for the day ahead but returned upstairs to his apartment for the remainder of the day and night. It was the 90s, a time long before the word bipolar would serve as a common adjective, a time before the disorder was well known or understood. It was the 90s, and Ricky, my uncle, had already lived with the disorder for 20 years.
The former restaurant is now a Chipotle.
Ricky, the eldest of three children, was born in 1959. As a baby, he suffered from severe asthma, which resulted in constant doctor’s appointments and would remain significant until he was about thirteen.
When the family took a trip to Disneyland, Ricky was fourteen. It was on that trip that a significant change was noted. After initially being thrilled to reunite with a friend from summer camp, a local to Los Angeles, Ricky called his parents to tell them he wasn’t feeling well. He had asked to be picked up. The next day they had planned to attend a hockey game together, something he had been looking forward to, but now he wanted to leave. He’d been distant at Disney too, but only now was the realization setting in for my grandma.
A doctor in Los Angeles, a friend of the family, couldn’t find anything wrong with him. His siblings finished out the remainder of the trip with friends, and Ricky returned home to Illinois with his parents.
The first doctor they saw after returning from California ran tests and diagnosed him with a virus, an excuse for an inability to locate a direct issue. Not satisfied with the ambiguity of the diagnosis but unsure of what else to do, they went home.
A few weeks later, home alone on a Monday night with the kids, my grandma noticed that Ricky was taking a significantly longer than usual amount of time to take out the trash. When he came through the front door, she was met with his tears, hysteria, an existential crisis that he could not be calmed out of. A neighbor sent over her brother, a psychiatrist, who happened to be in town temporarily. That was the beginning.
Still, every time she turned on to Sunset Drive on her way home, she hoped more than anything, not to see an ambulance in the driveway.
In the early seventies, mental illness was still notably taboo, a conversational rarity typically associated with situations rather than brain chemistry. My grandma, admittedly, said all of the wrong things. You have a family that loves you, that wants to help you. People have it worse. You have everything you need. Years later, a psychiatrist would frame the experience in a way my grandmother would finally be able to understand. Picture a giant vat, filled entirely with shit. Ricky is at the bottom of it, coated and slick, trying to climb out of it.
Finding a doctor was half the battle. The first doctor was indifferent. A third offered Ricky, sixteen at the time, a can of beer in an attempt to establish rapport. An overbooked specialist at Forest hospital is what led them to Buddy.
My grandma credits Buddy Portugal with the longevity of my uncle’s life. Only ten years younger than her, Buddy was the family’s Jewish version of a saving grace. Buddy’s declaration of Ricky’s love for his family eased the overwhelming fear trailing my grandma’s every decision, a fear that one day Ricky might take his own life. When she agonized over leaving Ricky alone to attend a funeral, Buddy reminded her he could not be watched every moment of every day, that it would not change the outcome of a desire. Still, every time she turned on to Sunset Drive on her way home, she hoped more than anything, not to see an ambulance in the driveway.
There was a pattern, a latticed routine. He was okay, and then he wasn’t. There were good times and there weren’t. His body couldn’t tolerate Lithium. Medications worked and they didn’t. His hands swelled. His wrists ached. His vision, perpetually foggy. Alcohol and cannabis didn’t help, but without them, there wouldn’t be much difference.
After Pasta Cucina closed, there were jobs, but none as fulfilling. Even as depression ate his days, months of it at a time, Ricky always returned from the periods with enough motivation to get a new job, fall back into functionality. And then he met Erica.
Declaring that Ricky was her soulmate, Erica quickly became a significant character in his life. My uncle met his soon-to-be bride at a Who concert, one of his favorite bands. An avid music fan, concerts were his outlet. Erica was eccentric and loud, the opposite of my kind, but generally soft-spoken uncle. Among our genial but generally lowkey family, she stood out in eccentricity.
Together, they got an apartment in Rogers Park where they lived shortly with his two huskies and her two chow chows, lion-like dogs with tongues the color of grape juice. Compared to the striking features of the huskies, the dogs looked like arcade-prize stuffed animals, rounded and brown, with faces smushed inward. They were only allowed two dogs in the apartment, but they had four in total, so walks were done strategically with one of each breed and then swapped.
The details of the relationship can only, at best, be guessed by the members of my family. He cashed in his IRA to buy her wedding ring. She was overly affectionate, moderately controlling, likely manipulative, and held onto his credit cards under the guise of protection. When the wedding was canceled 10 days before its set date, I, just nine at the time, could only understand that my flower girl dress was going to go without use. I was young, but not enough to know it wasn’t worth asking questions about. I can imagine he was heartbroken, maybe even devastated, to have come close to a life event that most imagine they’ll have eventually, only to fall short of the actual.
His dogs were a constant in an otherwise chaotic set of circumstances. Sage and Cody, and later Jazz and Jade. From the day he moved out of his parents’ house, he knew he would get one of his own. When he opened the hatchback of his car with two, my grandma was surprised but not concerned. He was an animal lover to his core. When his last dog was at his end, sick with some sort of incurable ailment, he skipped out on a Styx show, his favorite band, to be by her side. The huskies, who left their mark in the form of fur, on every piece of furniture and clothing he owned, were adored for the entirety of their existence. He didn’t mind the shedding that took place on every square inch of his apartment, or their intelligence that led them to learn how to turn on the television. He loved the breed, their waxy and thick mane, their icy blue eyes and endless energy. They were his companions, his children, and beside his family, his reason for perseverance.
To me, my brother and three cousins, Uncle Ricky was Uncle Toy. It was a name we coined seemingly unanimously, and it suited him perfectly. In the basement of my cousins’ childhood home, we swarmed our uncle, our only one, with hyperactive limbs and excitement. Uncle Toy was Uncle Toy because he was fun, energetic, and would likely let us get away with things our parents would not. We knew of it, but we never witnessed firsthand, the depression or mania-induced rage that sometimes overtook his actions. In my memories, we are bouncing around my Bubbie’s basement at family dinners, Hanukkah parties, Passover Seder, eager for any time we might get to spend with him. There was always room at the kids table for this adult.
After his last inpatient stay, Ricky was discouraged. How many times am I going to have to start over? he asked my grandma. She didn’t have an answer for him. But he always could. And he always did.
Because of the constant imbalance of his brain, the waves of mania and all-consuming bouts of depression, work did not come easy. Jobs were demanding with needs that could not be consistently met. The hours were long, and the medication, never quite right. After a stint working at a Sbarro, he got a job working in the back of a seafood restaurant alongside high school students, a far cry from his former role as head chef and owner. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a job. It would be the last one he would have.
My father knew, in that way your body can feel an absence even before your brain has knowledge of it. There were days without phone calls, longer than the usual where floods of a depressive kind would render him contactless. My grandma likely knew, too, before actually knowing, that her first born, at the age of fifty-four, was now indefinitely out of reach.
On the fourth day of unanswered calls, my father went to his apartment with a spare key he never wanted to use and confirmed it.
Time, a provider of ignorance, thief of cognition. Years do a number on the present’s ability to recognize what’s missing.
My grandmother requested an autopsy because she had to know. When the results came back as a pulmonary embolism, a wave of complicated relief washed over her. Buddy had been right.
My family maintained a relationship with Buddy for years, both before and after Ricky’s death. On the morning after my father’s cancer diagnosis, Buddy Portugal suffered a stroke in his office that would ultimately lead to his death. My grandma, now 84, has outlived both Buddy, and her oldest son.
Because I was only twelve at the time of my uncle’s death, one would imagine that my memory of having known him, a period of time which is now less than half of my entire life, would be vague and insignificant. But I remember him more than I intend to, even before the picture, found somewhere in my grandma’s possession, was mounted on my wall. I remember him because in a lot of ways, I am him. I remember him on days when I am engulfed by the disorder of my own brain, not too dissimilar from his and its conflicts. I remember when the insomnia is longer than daylight, when my body is wrecked by unfounded exhaustion. I remember that although he is not alive, he survived.
At the wedding of my cousin Billy, the first of us five to marry, my uncle’s absence glared like a misplaced bulb in a ballroom chandelier. When I whispered my observation to my father as the couple had their first dance, his eyes welled. He hadn’t considered it. Time, a provider of ignorance, thief of cognition. Years do a number on the present’s ability to recognize what’s missing. This week, it will have been thirteen.
The huskies on my wall, so perfectly captured, are a snippet of pride I showcase to guests. Those were my uncle’s, I tell them as though they might care. The picture, a wholesome moment captured and printed, tells the smallest bit of a story that nobody else is telling. When I wander the aisles of the antique malls by my house and look through portraits of people, pets, and families, I wonder who they are and when their story stopped being told. Although likely unintentional, their faces in the frames tell me that somewhere down the line, there was no one to pass the photos along to, no one living to remember, recall, or keep.
I have the photo of the huskies, seated patiently upon the bar top, mounted on my wall because I want to remember. The portraiture of animals surrounding, a decorative afterthought.
As I age, and as my parents and cousins, grandma and aunt do, too, the stories we have of my uncle will likely grow sparse, lesser than they already are, like the names of generations prior we’ve already forgotten. In the Jewish faith, when a loved one dies, we don’t say rest in peace, but instead, may their memory be a blessing, but a memory can only be a blessing if we use it often, if we keep it with us, if we acknowledge it, verbalize it, breathe life into it. Here, on a wall in my living room, I am doing just that.
Danielle (she/her) is an MFA alum and professor of disability rhetoric and creative writing at Chapman University. A finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Non-fiction and nominee for The Pushcart Prize in Creative Non-Fiction and Best of the Net 2022 & 2023, her work has appeared in Pigeon Pages, Driftwood Press, The New Orleans Review and others. @danielleshorr