Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 039: What Animals Teach Us About Life Through the Dying Process

Episode Transcript: 

Karen Wylie: Hello and welcome back to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. I'm Karen Wylie here today with my wonderful co-host and founder of BrightHaven, Gail Pope. 

Today we're having one of my favorite kinds of conversations: the ones where we look beyond the symptoms of our pets, beyond our caregiving tasks, and into the deeper meaning of our caregiving journey with our pets.

Today we're going to talk about what animals teach us about life through the process of dying. These kinds of lessons are tender and sometimes profound. Gail, you said many times that your animals have shaped who you are as a person.

Gail Pope: Oh, was that a question?

Karen Wylie: That was your question. Would you like me to, let me repeat it.

Gail Pope: Oh, how funny.

Karen Wylie: Gail, you've said many times that your animals have shaped who you are as a person. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Gail Pope: Gosh, I hadn't expected that kind of a question. It's huge. It's really huge and wow, it takes me back years and years probably back to childhood growing up with, always animals, generally only maybe one, two, or three at a time but then it takes me straight into the BrightHaven era where there were many more animals. 

Goodness, there's so many things that I think have changed me into who I am today. I think kindness, gratitude, generosity— all of the things that as humans we strive for, but we don't necessarily get led to follow along a particular path. 

For me, those things all came together. I don't know if this makes sense, but in the path of the work that I do - on the one hand caring for and loving and helping animals. Then on the other side, as they've taught me to duplicate that to help to care for and love or offer loving kindness to people. 

So it's a continuum of all the things that they've taught me, I guess in particular through the work of BrightHaven.

Perhaps most of my learning has come through being with animals towards the end of life and at the end of life when care for yourself — care for yourself — is increasing, perhaps, but care for the animal is decreasing. 

So you're still compelled to be with them but it switches into a different way. It perhaps brings out different parts of you at that time. Does that make sense?

Karen Wylie: It does make perfect sense to me because in my experiences of caregiving as well, there is so much of a give and take as the pet's body changes. Therefore what I need to do to provide physical care is always something I have to adapt over time. 

As that is happening, I also get a sense of spiritually and energetically something changing, which prompts me to be thinking and feeling differently through the process as well. I think what I most begin to experience at the end of life is that I'm more present with those animals.

We talked about this last week,where you're spending so much time with them every step of the way— you're monitoring them to make sure you're not missing something. So there's a little bit of a worry that goes along with perhaps the motivation to find more time, more consistent time to be with them and checking in on them. 

But I think it does prompt me to be more present and to be aware of what that means to be present which again, like I just mentioned, ties in very much to what we were talking about in last week's podcast because our animals do live in the now. So to them, every moment counts because they're not thinking of a past and they're not thinking of a future.

Although I do certainly have the sense that when an animal does enter an active dying process, that they have an understanding that their body is changing, that their physical abilities are changing, and that helps them begin making a spiritual transition. 

If I think throughout my life of what I have learned about spirituality, my animals' deaths were what actually led me into a greater awareness - probably because the love that you have for them is so immense and therefore the loss is so big that you really need to find a way to have peace with their loss. 

For a lot of people that begins to allow you to think about how to connect with them after they have left their bodies.

So for me, I'd say the greatest lessons from my animals who I would lose were how much they taught me about spirituality, and in that way just living differently. Once you start to understand that there is something beyond this physical life, you're not the same person. You have hope, you have a belief or an optimism that there is always something beyond. I don't think I am as afraid of things and I don't mean just what would cause death but I don't think of mistakes that I make as *gasp*. Mistakes are part of just another lesson along the road.

So I feel like that's what animals have done for me throughout their dying process. 

Obviously we learn different things by the joy in everyday life with them but those lessons certainly continue as they begin to leave this world or when they're gone.

Gail Pope: That was all amazing and it really underscores what I was thinking, that one of the greatest lessons that they teach us is how to accept the circle of life and death itself, and particularly in their dying processes. 

I think I've come to obviously be less scared of death, the actual process of death. I believe I think that I was scared of death as most people are, but then that door opened a crack and I started to see, "Ooh, this is a different world. Oh wow! This changes the way I think."

And little by little it got stronger and more heavily underlined by experiences until I reached a point of being a lot more comfortable with the idea, and a lot less scared of death, and a lot more grateful to the animals that shared that process with me - and then maybe came back and talked to me with an animal communicator, or odd things happened at home that gave me comfort and the feeling of, "Yes, you are still here with me."

Karen Wylie: Have you ever had the experience where an animal's presence transforms the energy in the room?

Gail Pope: You mean presumably after their death?

Karen Wylie: Before or after or on their way?

Gail Pope: I was just going to say and then we've got on their way. I think during the dying process, there is a particular point perhaps where I am very aware— 

Ooh, this is an interesting thing that I've never actually talked about or really thought about so I may ramble. 

But the number of times that I have been with an animal who is in the dying process towards the end, I am focusing primarily on this “being” in front of me. This beautiful being who is still a thing, if you like. It's a body that I've loved for a very long time with a beautiful inhabitant but now all of a sudden my vision, my view, starts to split. I'm still seeing the body. I'm aware of some kind of mind connection.

Then I'm also aware— is it spirit? Is it soul? But there's a split. I don't think I've ever even really acknowledged that feeling before. I guess as the spirit starts to leave the body, I've never been aware that I could see both or be with both. Maybe that's a better term. Have you?

Karen Wylie: Yes, and I think that's another one of the lessons for me that animals have provided because I have had the experience since— also with humans. But my animals were the first to help me understand that when I'm caring for them, when they're in palliative care or hospice care, let's say the last six months of their life, the last month or two of their life and so forth, and things are changing. 

But I'm still mostly focused on the physical caregiving aspect of it. Taking care of their body, and what their body needs. 

As their physicality declines, I begin to sense their spirit more, and it's their soul. That's when, for me, hospice care is I'm caring for them on two levels. I'm caring for their physical body which is in decline, because they are getting ready to completely leave their body. But their spirit, their soul, is still mostly in their body.

I have always thought, and I know you and I have talked about this before, that toward the end let's say the last few days, last week or so of a hospice type death where they're gradually declining…I'll see these pets staring at a space on the wall where there's nothing to actually look at, but they're very engaged and they're just staring at the wall. 

I equate that to be similar to the deathbed visions that humans describe to their family members. Then the family members are usually very upset and talk to the nurses about, "Oh my God, my mom is having a conversation with her sister, but she died 17 years ago. How can this be?"

Sometimes the nurses used to say, "Oh, it's just how the drugs are working in their body. Don't pay any attention to it. She's fine."

Now there’s a lot more nurses these days that are ready to say, "Sometimes it's almost like they have one foot in the next world while they still have one foot in this one."

I think that happens for our pets as well. 

Seeing that and feeling that the dying process is the separation of the soul from the body. 

But for a while in our day-to-day care, we are addressing two levels. We're supporting the soul's transition and what is needed there but we're also still caring for the physical body.

Gail Pope: I have an interesting question for you.

Karen Wylie: Yes, ma'am.

Gail Pope: Oh, this is taking me back to Frazier's journey, and I know I've talked about him often, but do you believe that during the dying process, the soul can leave the body? Not necessarily only in the dying process, but do you believe the soul can leave the body and then step back into it during that process?

Karen Wylie: You mean have an out of body experience the way some humans do?

Gail Pope: No. I'm just saying that imagine, this is what happened with Frazier and with some others. Here we have our beloved lying, dying, and then they die. So yes, the soul has stepped out, right? However, we know from experience that the soul can then step back in again, "Oh maybe I left a bit early. It's not time for my appointment. Oh, now I'm breathing again. Oh, this body's strange. Oh, I'll be okay."

Then at some later time, they step out and step back in again.

Karen Wylie: I think that's very possible. Again, I so wish they could just tell us all about this. None of mine have communicated that very clearly in a way that I understand. But we do know that humans have near death experiences where their body dies and they can rise above where they are in an emergency room or where they are at home in their bed and they can see themselves on the bed.

Then they have some experiences where they will talk about seeing a light, a tunnel, seeing dear relatives that have passed on and then within three to five minutes they're back in the body. 

So why wouldn't that be possible for our pets? I believe anything that we experience as humans, that our pets are likely to experience or more. They just seem more connected and more plugged into more than we are.

Gail Pope: Without doubt. It's just fascinating for me, I hadn't really thought of it as a parallel to the human experience and some of them have when everything stopped. They've gone and literally in a very short space of time, "Oh, actually he's okay. He's breathing again."

This happened to me recently when Andy died and Purrci died too. But with Frazier it was very different because he stepped out for longer periods of time and over several months too. So that took us into the spooky realm but again it is a lesson for us to understand that life does go on and we are so focused on life in that body that we don't tend to actually open up the conversation about life not in that body. 

How connected maybe the spirit still is to that body or to the caregiver, the family, the best friend, the cat next door. There's still a connection that should be embraced perhaps. I don't know how or how better to do that but I think the more we can actually open up these kinds of conversations because they're invaluable, aren't they? We all learn from them, don't we?

Karen Wylie: Absolutely. I think realizing that I am caring for two parts of my pet: their soul, and their body, is what allows me to look differently at death. 

As you were saying, not be as afraid of it. I'm not "I wonder how I will die?" But being "What's going to happen afterwards?" I don't worry about it because I have a sense of them and mostly it's feeling their energy field, their aura. I feel it dissipate. I feel it lessen as they get closer to physical death and it's what wakes me up in the middle of the night if they have left because I will physically wake up with a start. I'll look at the clock and I'll just have this sense and within 10 seconds I'm aware, "It's oh my God, he's left." Then I have to get up and check.

Gail Pope: You hear those stories as well, and that reminds me to say something to you that I know I've probably said before. Why don't you explore the gift you have of mediumship? Oh, I could ask you so many questions. I could talk to so many animals and to just be able to have that gift of connection to help others. Oh my gosh, it must be this wonderful thing.

Karen Wylie: I do feel it's a gift. I feel very grateful that I had the experiences, the training that has allowed me to realize and understand that there are some things I can do. It also has taught me there are some things I can't do very well - yet. 

I never say that I'll never be able to do it, because we're all born being able to do this stuff— of being able to relate psychically to our animals who have passed, our friends and relatives who have passed on. But life takes over and life starts demanding logic and analysis and all that. We tend to not have the perceptive side of us rewarded or recognized, or encouraged. So I'm grateful that I have these opportunities because of what it does. The comfort it gives me with death.

That doesn't mean I don't sob my eyes out and heart out when I'm losing one of my babies. But again, I have an understanding of where they're going and what it's going to feel like for them because I get little glimpses of it. I don't have a very consistent connection. I don't hold a consistent vibration or frequency that allows me to connect. So that's what I would need to work on. But I can just stop writing or doing podcasts….

Gail Pope: No!!!!

Karen Wylie: For me it has required really, I don't want to say to downsize my life, but accept fewer tasks, fewer analytical responsibilities so that I can spend more time in the perceptive part of my life. Although I see some things and I hear even fewer, basically it's what I feel energetically and then know from what I feel. 

So that's going back to what started this particular thread of conversation: if I have gone to bed for two, three hours because I think they're sleeping and everything's okay. Then it's like there's some energetic force in the world around me that is different. It's “off” and it's "Oh, they've gone."

Then I go and I'll find that they have in fact gone. So for me it's very physical but that's also then what allows me to feel them when they come back.

Gail Pope: Yes, I think it's interesting that animals have clearly taught us, they teach all of us who love them, so many different lessons. Sometimes we don't even really understand them or remember them at the time but they bring value to our lives as we get older. Then, when you reach my age, suddenly there's not enough time!

There are all these things that I'm excited about and I want to learn more about. I know there's not enough time necessarily in the future but in my life every day because every day is full up. So it is always going to be, "Oh, tomorrow and tomorrow… Oh God, it is tomorrow again."

But I guess that's what the soul is saying, "It's okay, slow down. Do your best, now. Do it with lots of love and those baby steps. Then when you come back, next time, you'll be at the starting gate ready to go."

Karen Wylie: That's the thing, some days I'm a little behind you in age but I'm certainly—

Gail Pope: A lot.

Karen Wylie: What, 12 years? But there's still less time ahead of me than what I have behind me. So when you start to have that awareness, it's almost like, "I'm just going to have to learn when I come back in the next life." There's some things that just aren't going to have enough time to do. 

I think in terms of what I have learned and what my animals have taught me about life while caring for them as they die, is very much being present. Like we talked about more in last week's episode, but it still is very true. Then you also brought up the point about the whole circle of life and they accept it completely.

So often we want to fight— we're fighting for them to stay. We're fighting for our relatives to stay. I think that's normal and desirable because if we love them, of course we want them with us but they don't really leave us either. That is a lesson from them, from the animals. I can't say I got that from caregiving with humans. This learning came from the animals and then I can understand human death better because of them— also because you cared for your mom in hospice.

Gail Pope: I was just thinking about that. I was with my dad when he died but not for a long period of time because he was in England and I flew back for the last six weeks of his life but yes, I was a caregiver during that time. Interestingly enough, I didn't understand death as I understand it now. I'd reached a point where I wasn't scared of it, and I was comfortable to be with him, which was a great gift given to me by the animals. Of course I’d reached and was still very much immersed in the belief that life goes on.

Maybe that's what helped me through that period because the rest of the family weren't, and they were very scared. They were facing the wall that was approaching that they couldn't get through, and it was a dreadful thing. 

But with my mom, that was much more recent. The caregiving part was the hardest part. Emotionally, I knew it was her time and that she was going to be leaving at all levels. I wasn't particularly worried about what might happen and how she would die. I had to trust that things were working out just as they were meant to for her. Caregiving and the way her body closed down slowly to allow the spirit to step out - that was the hard part for me. She was my mom and I loved her.

That was hard emotionally but then she also remained very much herself too. She had a very different kind of sense of humor and that would spark every now and again, and I'd be sitting really glum and, "Oh God, this is... I wonder what's going to happen next?"

And then she'd say something quite funny and it would just bring me back to, "Hold on, let go of all that. Be with this person who you love who is actually teaching you some lessons here."

Karen Wylie: Continuing to teach all the way through. Do you think that caring for our animals through the dying process, through their illness and dying, do you think it reveals a different kind of love for us to learn from?

Gail Pope: Ooh, I don't know how to express this. I think there is a general love that we feel easily. It's in our mind and our brain. We feel it, we understand it. But then there is a different love that we may suddenly acknowledge with someone we thought we loved, but suddenly it's at a different level— it's a heart love. It's an emotion that has settled itself deep inside and won't let go. That feels a little different. Does that make sense?

Karen Wylie: Yes, it does. It does to me because there comes a time in the dying process of my animals, and see if this makes sense to you, that I recognize that they're close to leaving and that I have a responsibility to help their soul on its way.

Gail Pope: Ooh!

Karen Wylie: It's not just the physical caregiving. I can know in my head that this is part of their soul's journey as they will ultimately release their soul from their physical body. But there comes a time in the dying process where it's like that importance shifts and they're more out of their body than they are in it. I just become aware that it's time for me to stop being in my grief and not wanting them to leave. It's my job, it's my role, it's my responsibility to help their soul go.

Gail Pope: I just had another revelation here and I actually scribbled it down so I wouldn't forget it. But what I think what we're talking about now has gone to not only the heart but the heart and soul. We put them together, the heart and soul connection. Just what you were talking about as part of the journey but then it suddenly becomes obvious. That takes me to, you must remember the Silver Cord story and that completes the journey, doesn't it?

Karen Wylie: Yes, it does.

Gail Pope: Wow! Because it is heart and soul— intertwined, letting go in one way but creating a forever link.

Karen Wylie: And I no longer need to cut the cord because I let the cord go.

Gail Pope: You let it go, it's time.

Karen Wylie: Because I understand it's time but part of that is that I also understand that they can come back and that there's ways to connect. I know I've shared this several different times but it's two and a half years since Mr. Hope died. All I have to do is mention his name in front of my two Aussies, and they're immediately looking up at the ceiling.

Gail Pope: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you but I'm sitting here thinking, I think we're actually on the edge of a new conversation. To actually explore a little further when that cord is let go or it's cut, how that presence is still with us. I don't know how to elucidate quite what I'm saying but it's stepping into what is and how can we live with the heart and soul connection that we've always had in our lifetime with this animal. How does this continue? Now, how does this go on? It's stepping into an unknown territory.

Karen Wylie: I think you're right that if we don't stop here at this point and promise to continue this conversation and look at where the journey continues to go, we would probably be another half an hour or an hour.

So perhaps, we come to a pause here and promise that we'll come back to talk a little bit more about this. 

We have been working on a new booklet about "Soul Centered Pet Care" and how it allows you to see the death of your pets a little differently. So I think that's rubbing off on us. 

So we will come back to this next week. 

We thank you for being with us this week and hope that some of what we've described to you is something that you have experienced or would like to experience, and we'll talk more about it next week.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Gail Pope: Goodbye. Thank you so much.