Once on a trip to Italy with my wife Connie and my guide dog Corky we went to the vast Milanese “city of the dead” the “Cimitero Monumentale di Milano”. I carried a bouquet of roses to place at the tomb of Vladimir Horowitz. The great pianist’s family had left a considerable sum to Guiding Eyes. The Wanda Horowitz endowment provides graduates with veterinary assistance funds in cases of financial or medical need. Long ago, in the early 1960’s the Horowitz family owned a released dog from Guiding Eyes as a family pet. No one at Guiding Eyes suspected the great composer would eventually leave his Manhattan townhouse and his Steinway piano to a small school for the blind. As for me, I’d grown up listening to Horowitz. I’d worn out my LP of his 1965 “return concert” at Carnegie Hall. His recordings of Schumann owned a central place in my music library. Once I’d even seen him live in Chicago from stage seats—I’d been only ten feet away from the Maestro.
The Horowitz tomb is really the Toscanini family tomb—Wanda Horowitz was the great conductor’s daughter. I laid the roses before the wrought iron gate of the tomb and Corky scented the soft air. Connie pointed out a funerary monument shaped like a pyramid and the famous avenue of trees. We walked a long way. We passed the tomb of the composer Amilcare Ponchielli and the poet Salvatore Quasimodo. The birds sang. I felt the mysterious and unforeseeable ways we’re interconnected. I felt warm. Felt how much I loved my life. And the dignified upright gravediggers waved as we passed. One of them said “cane guida”. “The grave diggers are more cheerful than the waiters in Milan,” I thought.
Planet of the Blind 