Love and Death and Pets
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Sometimes, tragedy leads to true love. One of the more unusual back stories this week among the scores of gay couples who married on Tuesday outside the Los Angeles County building in Norwalk belonged to Steven Van Zile and Ciro Barbaro, below. They met when Van Zile took his beloved Cairn terrier, Trundle Bundle, who had just died at age 18, to the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas to be cremated.
Barbaro was a pet mortician.
‘He had bought a pink marble urn,’ recalls Barbaro, whose job was to prepare animals for burial or cremation as well as deal with their bereaved owners. ‘The dog was very spoiled. She drank designer water. He bought her filet mignon. That’s why we still haven’t gotten a pet--we have diametrically opposed views on how to take care of a pet.’
The distraught Van Zile confided that he wasn’t sure he wanted to have Trundle Bundle cremated or buried. The two men chatted. ‘He was crying...She was quite a companion,’ said Barbaro. Van Zile finally decided his pet would be buried. Van Zile visited the park a second time, still upset. ‘I got a box of tissues and gave it to him,’ recalled Barbaro.
On his third visit, a calmer Van Zile picked out grave markers with Barbaro’s help. ‘That’s when we discussed having dinner together,’ said Barbaro.
The two men moved in together a few months later. Now living in Baldwin Hills, they have been a couple for 14 years.
Barbaro worked at the pet cemetery for a year and had been planning to quit for a couple of months before he met Van Zile. ‘It was too depressing. I thought, ‘Why am I not leaving?’ ‘ Shortly after meeting Van Zile, he gave notice.
Barbaro, 56, a longtime actor in local theater and TV shows, now works as a research focus group moderator. Van Zile, 44, is director of property management for SRO Housing Corporation.
‘We will get a pet one day,’ Barbaro predicts. ‘And if the dog wants to sit at the table with us, what can I say? I love dogs, too.’
--Carla Hall
