‘Marley’ author: Goodbye part of life
One of John Grogan’s best life teachers was a wonderfully bad dog named Marley.
His neurotic Labrador retriever got kicked out of obedience class, swallowed numerous inanimate objects on a daily basis and defiled “Dog Beach” during his first (and last) visit. But along with massive amounts of flying fur, he brought a lot of laughter and helped a newlywed couple grow into a family.
Grogan chronicled the dog’s many misadventures in his best-selling book, “Marley & Me,” and was a script consultant for the 2008 film.
His latest book, “The Longest Trip Home,” details his childhood in suburban Detroit as one of four children in a devout Catholic family, his journey into adulthood and his final visit with his dying father.
Grogan, a former journalist, will share his stories Tuesday during the annual Common Bond Breakfast, a fundraiser for Erin’s House for Grieving Children.
“I’ll try to bring it back to how life experiences can lead to really beautiful moments at the end of life, when you need to say goodbye. It’s a natural part of life,” he says during a phone interview from his home in Pennsylvania, promising that the sober topic will offer plenty of laughs, too.
Grogan lives with his wife, three teens, two dogs, two cats and nine chickens. Both dogs are also Labs; one is calm, the other is “a little comedian” but isn’t nearly as wild as Marley, he says.
After Marley’s death in December 2003, Grogan wrote a final column about the dog he’d had for 13 years, which generated hundreds of e-mails from Philadelphia Inquirer readers. Many shared a similar theme: “It’s almost like you were describing our life,” they would tell him.
He started writing the book that month.
“I wrote a book that I believed in; it had a transformative effect,” he says, adding that luck and timing also played a role in its success. “Marley & Me” helped launch a popular genre of “personal narrative dog books.”
In his view, the book simply told the amusing story of “everyday people with a pet who plays a major role in our family.”
But transforming the book into a movie was anything but an ordinary experience. He and his wife, Jenny, visited the set several times.
“It was one of most surreal things I’ve ever experienced. It’s a very bizarre thing to be standing behind a camera watching these celebrity actors (Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston) pretend to be you and act out scenes from your life,” he says.
“The filmmakers were very respectful. They took my comments into consideration. It’s certainly not an exact copy of my book – they took liberties,” he says, such as changing his career, creating a fictional friend and adding a bit more drama to help translate internal dialogue.
“But I think it honors the spirit of my real story. Overall, we were happy with it.”
So is “The Longest Trip Home” film fodder, too? Probably not, he says, laughing.
The memoir covers the “comical clashes of culture between my parents – they were old-school Catholics who went to Mass every day and wanted their kids to become the next parish priest – and their son, who was being pulled by the social upheaval of the ’60s and ’70s,” he says.
“In the end, it’s how the family’s love overcame its difficulties. My longest trip home … is my lifelong journey, trying to reconcile our differences in faith and our love for each other.”
He plans to write another non-fiction book, just as soon as he finishes the fifth children’s book about Marley.
Although the exuberant Lab was the polar opposite of a smart, well-behaved dog that Grogan had as a kid, Marley had his good points, too.
And despite the ongoing frustration and growing financial investment (for home repairs and vet bills), the Grogans never gave up on the dog they named after Bob Marley.
“When you bring a dog into your life, you have to make a lot of compromises. But they give a lot; there is such loyalty and joy there,” he says.
“Pets are non-judgmental; they love unconditionally. (They) really teach kids empathy and responsibility,” he says.
And Marley kept teaching, even at the end.
“His parting gift to our family was a gentle introduction to death for my children. They’d never lost a loved one before. That helped prepare them for losing their grandfather” the following December, Grogan says.
Maybe he wasn’t such a bad dog after all.
You would be happy to inherit her wit, but you might be worried about acquiring your mom’s health problems.