I've lost two best buddies - Mary McGrory and my dog Barley. Both lived long and full lives (Mary was 85; Barley was 15), and that is some consolation. They died three days apart.
If you think Mary would mind sharing this space with Barley, then you didn't know Mary McGrory. She was as crazy about dogs as Barley was about people. She was always sending me dog stories she clipped from newspapers, and she knew the sad ones would leave me on the floor. Her occasional columns on dogs - nearly always happy tales - were a huge hit with her readers and blessed relief from the nonsense and scandals in Washington.
She must have had my soft spot for dogs in mind when, a few years ago, she asked me if I would be one of the eulogists at her funeral. After the third brandy, I finally agreed and Mary said, "Good. Now here are your instructions - be brief, talk about why the Washington Star was such a special place for us, and don't go blubbery on me the way you do when you read a dog story with a sad ending."
Some of you may not know of Mary McGrory, so let me tell you why her death was front-page news in Washington. In a newspaper career that spanned 50 years, Mary tried to confront power with truth. She won a Pulitzer Prize, but her proudest achievement was making Richard Nixon's "enemies list." Mary was a voice for the powerless. "No great men call me," she once said. "You know who calls me? Losers. I am their mark. If you want to abolish land mines . . . or if you want to save children from abuse, or stupid laws, or thick-headed judges, you have my telephone number. All the places of little hope, that's my constituency."
When her beloved Washington Star folded in 1981, Mary moved her column - but never her heart - to the Washington Post. A front-page obituary in the Post described Mary as "a major figure in 20th-century American journalism, a writer of lasting influence, exquisite technique, liberal convictions, a contempt for phonies and a love of orphans and delphiniums."
She was all that and much more to those of us lucky enough to have been her friend, as I was for almost three decades.
Barley was a big, handsome golden retriever with a boundless capacity for giving and receiving love. He never did anything bad. I don't think I ever heard him growl. He was a charmer, and Mary fell for him the moment she laid eyes on the golden boy.
When his back legs finally gave out, we said our goodbyes at the Bayshore Animal Hospital, where Dr. Steve Wehrmann, whose gentle hands had cared for Barley since he came in almost a dozen years ago as a rescue dog with heartworms, eased him out of this life.
Two days later, in Washington, the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament Catholic church overflowed with mourners, the famous and the obscure, who had come to bid farewell to Mary - senators and congressmen, pundits and reporters, editors and secretaries, nuns and lobbyists, maids and former White House aides. Ted Kennedy was there, and so were Tim Russert and George Stephanopolous and Bob Woodward.
Nothing was left to chance. Mary had planned her funeral down to the smallest detail and had it all written into her will. Ernie Miller, a retired Salvation Army colonel, was called back to active duty from North Carolina to sing her favorite hymns. She reserved rows up front for her old Star colleagues. Each eulogist was limited to seven minutes.
There was more laughter than tears in the church as the speakers told their favorite McGrory stories. Bill Hamilton, a friend and Post colleague, remembered Mary wandering around a hotel lobby and running into a Cabinet secretary. "Hey," she said, "you're the secretary of transportation - where are the elevators?"
The final hymn was most felicitous - Publish Glad Tidings.
After the funeral, family and friends gathered at Mary's condo apartment on Macomb Street for lunch. The wine flowed as abundantly as memories of the good times we had shared in her living room, which Mary filled with song, poetry, good cheer and laughter.
It was congressman Ed Markey, D-Mass., who realized something was missing. "We can't leave this place without singing," he said.
Mark Gearan, a former Clinton White House aide, sat down at the piano as he had so many times before, and it sounded like old times again as we sang some of Mary's favorite Irish songs and hymns. Then, when it all became too much to bear, the music and the laughter stopped. There were more tears and hugs. We knew that this was the last gathering of the Lower Macomb Street Choral Society, as Mary called her group of party regulars. The day ended on a just-right note, as if it all had been scripted by Mary.
We headed to the airport for the flight home and, just before midnight, walked into an achingly empty house.
