Incredible story of elderly woman who asked to be buried in NYC pet cemetery: Hard-drinking, chain-smoking lesbian, 92, was fired Hallmark for creating pop-up JESUS card - and had heartbreaking secret reason for her chosen burial site

Patricia Chaarte died in 2019 and her ashes were sent to Hartsdale Pet CemeteryStaff were confused as to why she was to be buried alone and not with any petsHer will did not give the tragic reason for her wishes until friends revealed truth

Almost a thousand people are buried in New York City’s biggest pet cemetery alongside their beloved dogs, birds, and even Mariah Carey’s cat.

Sometimes more upset about the deaths of their furry friends than their own parents, they arrange for a plot to be left inches away for when they join them.

But never had the staff at Hartsdale Pet Cemetery been sent the remains of a person who was to be buried alone, until Patricia Chaarte’s ashes arrived in 2020.

The 92-year-old woman left instructions for the urn to be sent from her home in San Miguel de Allende, a small city in Mexico popular with expats.

Ed Martin, who runs the cemetery his family started a century ago, was dismayed – why did she want to be buried all alone with no friends or family?

Patricia Chaarte (pictured right with her friend Isaac Uribe in Mexico) stunned staff at Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in New York by asking to be buried there – alone

Sometimes more upset about the deaths of their furry friends than their own parents, they arrange for a plot to be left inches away at Hartsdale Pet Cemetery for when they join them

Over the next year, Chaarte’s tragic story unraveled – starting with an innocuous photo of a mother and child, the New York Times explained.

Chaarte, born Patricia Lou Bassett on January 11, 1928, grew up in Kansas City but moved to New York as soon as she graduated high school.

There she worked as an illustrator, including for Hallmark until she was fired for creating an Easter card with a pop-up Jesus inside, captioned ‘He is risen’.

A friend later described this as a classic example of her particular brand of humor, and a product of ‘impatience with boredom and senseless repetition of triteness’.

Later, after realizing she was lesbian, she opened a needlework shop on the Upper East Side with her longtime girlfriend Wendy Johnson, called 2 Needles.

The couple retired in 1991 and moved to San Miguel de Allende, where Chaarte developed a close circle of friends to whom she left thousands of dollars each in her will, along with two housekeepers and a hairdresser.

Those friends described her as a loveable curmudgeon with a sharp wit and even sharper tongue.

‘I knew her balance was improving when I stopped hearing four-letter words come out of her mouth,’ her personal trainer and close friend Janis McDonald said.

Chaarte chain smoked Camels and guzzled down Dewars gin with just a single ice cube while crushing ‘extreme’ crossword puzzles and beating everyone at Scrabble.

She was also such a fan of peanut butter she often ate it straight from the jar with a spoon.

Over the next year, Chaarte’s tragic story unraveled – starting with this innocuous photo of a mother and child

Mariah Carey’s cat is one of the animals buried at Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, along with a lion cub and a Bengal tiger that was discovered in a New York apartment in 2003

Mariah Carey holding her cat Clarence, who was featured in the music video for ‘Always Be My Baby’ in 1996

But beneath her tough New Yorker exterior was a deep, unyielding pain that broke through to the surface on certain holidays or after enough drinks.

Her friends all knew, but Chaarte spent 569 days buried alone because she never told the lawyers handling her affairs.

What it took was for McDonald to impulsively snap a photo of an old picture of her friend holding a baby in her arms, as part of a little shrine on her mantlepiece, and send it to attorney Brian Johnson

She not only assumed he too knew she had a son who died decades ago, but that Chaarte had been buried alongside him.

The little boy in her arms was Dana Bassett, whom she had in 1954 as a result of a one-night stand and was minutes away from aborting until she had a change of heart.

Desperately hoping to avoid him falling in with the wrong crowd, she married her friend Abner Chaarte to provide him a with a father figure.

The marriage was short lived, but she kept his last name and thus no one handling her will made the connection.

But despite her best efforts as a single mother, Dana was hooked or heroin by the time he was 14, and died of an overdose just a few years later.

‘She never got over it. It was the tragedy of her life,’ her longtime friend Melanie Nance told the NYT.

Another friend said she hated Christmas because it reminded her of Dana.

Chaarte training with longtime friend and personal trainer Janis McDonald to recover from a stroke she suffered soon before her 80th birthday

With a dodgy knee since she was 18 and a career spent sitting down, Chaarte started going to the gym after she squatted down at a dog cage and could not get back up

After moving to Mexico, Chaarte lived in a two-bedroom house now renting for $1,500 a month and threw herself into an active social life and volunteered at a local animal shelter.

With a dodgy knee since she was 18 and a career spent sitting down, Chaarte started going to the gym after she squatted down at a dog cage and could not get back up.

‘Years of sitting at a drawing board causes everything to sag,’ she told McDonald when she came in for help.

She lost 40lbs and 10 per cent of her body fat over the next decade.

‘Everyone says I am skinny now, but that’s only because I was so fat before,’ she said.

McDonald tried to ‘enlighten her on the evils of smoking’ on an almost weekly basis, but gave up – only to be surprised when she cut the habit in half after a year.

Just before she turned 80 she had a stroke that caused her to lose the right side of her vision in both eyes, affecting her balance and ability to read and do her crossword.

She also developed severe anemia causing fatigue, depression, and loss of strength.

‘I am not going to be a tissy pristle,’ she told McDonald, and worked to regain her strength and train her brain to read despite her diminished eyesight.

But in the last years of her life she became increasingly frail and was diagnosed with cancer, even contemplating assisted suicide.

Ed Martin (pictured), who runs the cemetery his family started a century ago, was dismayed – why did she want to be buried all alone with no friends or family?

The two-bedroom house now renting for $1,500 a month where Chaarte lived after leaving New York with her longtime girlfriend in 1991

Chaarte was helped by her friends who brought her groceries and played cards in her nursing home as he health failed and the pain of Dana’s death weighed heavier.

‘If I die, one of my dreams would be to be with my son,’ she told her friend Isaac Uribe, despite being an atheist.

Chaarte kept Dana’s ashes with her until she left was preparing to leave New York, and in January 1989 buried him with his two beloved childhood pets.

As soon as McDonald told her the story, Johnson called Martin at the cemetery and he looked up Dana’s grave, using Chaarte’s maiden name.

The small granite headstone had no only Dana’s name and that of his dog Jackie Paper, and a cat, Puff the Magic Dragon, but ‘Patricia’ at the very top.

She was supposed to be there all along.