Joe Yonan and Red (c) Washington Post During my Dad's brief retirement before brain cancer took him at 63, he started each day sharing the milk from his cereal bowl with his four cats. Now, plenty of people put their bowl or plate down for their pets once they've finished their own meal. But for my Dad, the cats drank first. And if they drank too much, leaving his cereal soggy but no longer afloat, he would simply refill, offer them a last chance at a few more laps, and only then eat his breakfast.
Some of you are recoiling - but I'll bet more are nodding in recognition. For many of us, our pets are our family. My Dad and his wife considered my cats their grandchildren; their cats, my step-brothers.
Last week in his Washington Post essay, "The death of pet can hurt as much as the loss of a relative," Joe Yonan discussed the "sense of surprise and even shame" that occurs when people find themselves grieving deeply for their pets. He also addressed the sometimes unhelpful reactions from others in the face of deeply-felt grief over the death of an animal.
Some of you are recoiling - but I'll bet more are nodding in recognition. For many of us, our pets are our family. My Dad and his wife considered my cats their grandchildren; their cats, my step-brothers.
Last week in his Washington Post essay, "The death of pet can hurt as much as the loss of a relative," Joe Yonan discussed the "sense of surprise and even shame" that occurs when people find themselves grieving deeply for their pets. He also addressed the sometimes unhelpful reactions from others in the face of deeply-felt grief over the death of an animal.
Thankfully, many of my closest friends, family members and co-workers have been wonderfully sympathetic, and for that I’m grateful. Others have seemed reluctant to talk about my grief, and I suspect that it’s because they’re trying to stay in denial about the prospect of losing their own animal or trying not to remember the death of a previous one. My least-favorite reaction comes from those who are aiming to be supportive but regularly ask me when I’m going to adopt another dog, a reaction that seems tantamount to saying, “Get over it already. He was just a dog. Isn’t one as good as another?”
That can lead to what psychologists refer to as disenfranchised grief.
“Simply stated, many people (including pet owners) feel that grief over the death of a pet is not worthy of as much acknowledgment as the death of a person,” researchers wrote in a 2003 article in the journal Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. “Unfortunately, this tends to inhibit people from grieving fully when a pet dies.”
(c) Kristin Zabawa Yonan goes on to note the importance of ritual, citing Joan Didion's distinction between grief as passive and mourning as active. In fact, it may be the loss of the pet-imprinted rituals (like my Dad's morning milk feast) that's so profoundly disorienting when one of them dies. As Yonan writes, "I spent so much time taking care of Red, and Gromit before him, that when each one died it didn’t merely leave a hole in my single-person household; it was as if someone had rearranged my life, excising without my permission many of the rituals that had governed it."
I recently heard from Kristin Zabawa, a former zoo-keeper turned photographer who helps ease this transition by shooting "Soul Sessions" of people and their animal companions in the days before their deaths. This is the kind of healing attention that can turn grief into mourning, capturing the joy amidst the despair.
Kristin says, "Every session with animals who are close to death has a deep resonance of love and presence, as people wordlessly say good-bye to their animal. I feel honored to be invited into this family circle for the time that I am with them." See some of her beautiful work in this post from her blog.
What rituals have you used to mourn the death of an animal companion?
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For more resources on pet loss, see Dove Lewis' wonderful blog by Enid Traisman.
I recently heard from Kristin Zabawa, a former zoo-keeper turned photographer who helps ease this transition by shooting "Soul Sessions" of people and their animal companions in the days before their deaths. This is the kind of healing attention that can turn grief into mourning, capturing the joy amidst the despair.
Kristin says, "Every session with animals who are close to death has a deep resonance of love and presence, as people wordlessly say good-bye to their animal. I feel honored to be invited into this family circle for the time that I am with them." See some of her beautiful work in this post from her blog.
What rituals have you used to mourn the death of an animal companion?
# # #
For more resources on pet loss, see Dove Lewis' wonderful blog by Enid Traisman.
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