Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 049: Honoring the Body, Healing the Heart: Creating Sacred Space After Pet Loss

Episode Transcript: 

Karen Wylie: Hello and thank you for coming back to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. We're glad you're with us and hopefully you are with us for part two of our conversation about how grief and hospice and natural transition can all intertwine and affect how we cope with loss of our pets. 

Gail in terms of picking up where we were, let's begin talking about how grief is different for us if we allow or provide for ourselves— essentially a wake for our pets at home. 

We've talked about this at other times about the three day honoring that you often did at BrightHaven. Of course it doesn't have to be for three days but about taking the time to allow yourself, your family members, and your furry family members to see the body of the pet who has just passed and to understand that the pet has died.

They don't just disappear and no one can find the pet. We were talking a little earlier about that being kind of what was done a lot for us as children. Suddenly the pets were gone. How do you think an honoring process or a wake for our own pets in our own home, even just for ourselves and our family and our pets, can affect grief and help in coping after the loss of a pet?

Gail Pope: Ooh, I think this is multifaceted. Beginning with the body where you began the story. I think as a child, and as many children, I'm sure I wasn't allowed to see a body after death. I might have seen an animal in the road and broken my heart about that. I guess as a child if I had that experience when a human died, like my great grandmother, who was behind closed doors, there's a fear and it's like the body is disassociated from the being that I knew and loved. That's just the body and in some ways, in a spiritual way, yes that's the house they lived in but you don't have to be frightened of that house.

I think that was a process that I had to learn because going into the work that I do. In the very beginning, euthanasia was the way and then the body was taken away. So it was similar, I did see the body and I felt very comforted by being present then the body was taken away. It was only when I started again to learn more about spiritual issues in life and living and it just suddenly seemed appropriate to ask, "Why are we scared of the body?"

Learning more about Tibetan Buddhism and other cultures that honor the body after death, that's what opened the door for us at BrightHaven. Instead of just wrapping them up and loving them and grieving over them, let's honor them and that changed our grief. You could see it changed it for everybody in different ways. 

Yes, I think everybody grieves differently when there's a body. We had people— Carol, who works for BrightHaven, would often sit with the body in state or not long after death. Just sit in the energy with Reiki and just “be” with them. That would have an enormous impact on the energy, the ambiance in the house and with other animals.

It just brought grief into a place where, oh gosh, it sounds awful if I say where it made it more comfortable. But I think you probably know what I mean because there was a feeling of comfort being brought in this process of saying goodbye while you have the body - as you are honoring the house that your loved one lived in. You're still sharing and caring with them to a degree. Again, maybe those baby-steps and getting used to the transition because it's a transition for us as well as for them.

Karen Wylie: Very much. When I would be allowing time after the physical death, I was allowing time for my other animals at first more than thinking about the spiritual aspects or the soul aspects because the soul has to leave the body. "How long is that going to..." "What's that whole process like?" 

So although I came to that later, my first motivation for allowing time for myself and my pets was really because if you think about the fact that I had been breeding pure bred cats, everybody was related to somebody in one way. So when one of them was dying, it might have been the great grandmother of somebody else and her brother and a sister. They'd been together for 15 to 20 years as they would age. So they'd been together for decades and I thought they just absolutely had to have time.

So not only would they have the time during the dying process to be together which is something you and I have talked about at other times as well, how our pets can take on the role of being doulas. Then making sure that they also had access to the member of their family after death. 

I'm probably not alone in this but it doesn't matter whether they're in their last days or whether they've taken their last breath, I'm forever petting them. It's so hard to stop even though they have died. Having this time, allowing this time for yourself in your home, I think, is an incredible help to your ability to grieve and move forward whenever you're ready. If you think of euthanasia, both as it occurs at home or euthanasia in a clinic, as kind as the veterinarian who euthanized is trying to be saying, "Take the time you need." If you're at the clinic, you know that you're in a room that they probably need for something else.

So after 10 minutes or so, doors are usually being opened a little bit because they're looking to see if you're ready yet. So you don't feel like you have much time and especially if you've chosen cremation at that point. Your pet's body is going to be taken from you. And then at home, if you have home euthanasia from a mobile vet. They're also very considerate from what everyone has told me. I've not personally had a mobile euthanasia but all I ever hear is how kind they are and saying, "Take your time to say goodbye." They have paperwork they can do and they do some other things to allow you to have a few minutes.  

But I think having a few hours is better than a few minutes and I know you of course would often allow even days.

Gail Pope: Yes. You were saying that you first started this ritual thinking of your other animals and their needs. It didn't dawn on me. Really, it was more about learning from the human perspective that it felt right to honor the body. 

But then I started to realize that our animal doulas and some others would want to come and pay their respects to the body. Of course, they'd never had that opportunity before so that was amazing when I started realizing that. I'm just having pictures running through my mind of the different occurrences where animals have sat with other animals with such reverence, such reverence. Then it's as though they've gone through a letting-go period. They've stayed for a few minutes or for a lot longer occasionally, particularly with Beauregard, who you may have heard me speak about.

But then during the process you can feel the reverence. Then Beauregard, for instance, would walk away and 10 seconds later he may be chasing a toy mouse, but it's letting-go. It was a beautiful event. It was some kind of circle of completion perhaps for them and then they would move on. Others particularly who may not have been close friends to the animal died, would walk on by with a "Oh, okay." and that was it. I guess we're all a little like that, aren't we? 

I thought that was really interesting and I think one of the things that helped me with grief is having the altar.

It gradually came into being and I think it's really important for me now. When an animal dies, I make them comfortable and look beautiful, then come flowers and the question of  "How am I going to display them?" Then I start thinking, "Okay, so this is about their toys, their loved ones, their blanket." And I find myself walking around the house looking for things like, "Oh, he used to play with that. Oh, let me get..." and picking up things. "Oh, remember the day he knocked that crystal down and was chasing it with his paw across the floor? Let's get that crystal." So each honoring is different and very personalized.

I think while you are thinking, you can't help but be joyful as well as terribly sad. It all mingles up together because you have this beautiful feeling of honor, respect, dignity, love, and grief. It all mixes together. So I think it's very healing, very healing.

Karen Wylie: I think it is too and especially as you're describing it where you're going around the house and "He loved that. He loved that toy. That was a favorite toy." "Oh, that crystal he played with..." You are grieving a little bit as you're making each of those decisions because of the memories. But as you're saying, the memory is both joyful and a source of grief but as you're putting that altar together, overall, it can have a healing effect for you in those days but also in the future. 

If we think about, again, to contrast how we do this with human loss and how we handle it with pets: with humans we know generally there's a night or two of a wake where the body can be viewed in most cases.

Friends and family and neighbors can come and they can share their memories of the individual and talk to the family members. Of course, this is one of the reasons during COVID when these kinds of public gatherings were not possible. A lot of people were very much struggling with grief because they didn't have the wake, they didn't have the funerals, they didn't have the social support. 

But with our pets, we don't generally have public wakes. We don't generally have a ceremony at the burial site. So all these opportunities to be supported by other people in our lives, whether it's our family members, our friends, our neighbors, our coworkers— generally, we're not getting any of that from the loss of a pet.

So our grief is different and our grief is very often solitary. I found for the most part, it was my husband and me and the other furry members of the family. That's how we organized it. When I think about what you were able to do at BrightHaven and what you thought to do because you had all your volunteers. The grief that was being felt about losses was not just yours but there was a shared grief and allowing time for everyone to make a point to come by— even if it wasn't their day to volunteer. That there had been a death and they could be there. I think because we don't have these public wakes and funerals for our pets, it's very important that we think of how we can provide something like that for ourselves at home, in our homes.

Gail Pope: Okay, the words celebration of life came to me as you were talking about what humans do. Sometimes a wake turns into a celebration of life and that's immensely healing— a loving experience for many people. I think that made me look back to the days at BrightHaven where having that ritual was in fact offering a celebration of life.

So everybody who was present during 1, 2, 3 or more days was celebrating that animal and so it was lessening their grief. The other thing that comes into my mind as I think about it is when I've created an altar and it's all in place and ready to go, that's generally the time I will just sit down on the floor in front of it— cry and let go. 

That's one of the most healing things to do. It's almost like, "Oh you've joined the circle, you've come full circle and it is time to take a deep breath, cry. Let go and remember that tears are probably the most healing thing that you can do." because they release endorphins which are the feel good chemicals. They really do bring comfort. Again, so letting go and crying is easing grief and bringing comfort.

Karen Wylie: So interesting to hear you say that. See, this is one thing we've never talked about because I would cry after they died too. I think part of it was I would shed some tears over the time leading up. I'm not trying to say I didn't, but after they died and I'd arrange everything so other animals could easily come into the room and be part of it and I'm sitting there. I think the relief I felt would be not just the long road of caregiving but that we'd ‘done good,” that we were able to allow a natural transition - that everything we did, our goal, our hopes, everybody got to say goodbye beforehand. Everybody's getting to say goodbye now.

It's like a sigh of relief— not that it's done - because you still have to attend to the body and there are still decisions to be made. But I think when I cry in those moments, probably like 20 or 30 minutes afterwards, then the tears will come, but a lot of times I'm also smiling because I'm remembering things about that particular pet.

Gail Pope: And that releases all your tensions.

Karen Wylie: It does and caregiving is a long road a lot of times. I am always grateful that I have that long road rather than shorter roads.

Gail Pope: I think that's a very wise thing to say. Caregiving is a long road — and the road through grief is one of those long roads.

Karen Wylie: It is a long road.

Gail Pope: We all take it in different ways and at different times but it's one of our lessons in life that we all have to learn.

Karen Wylie: It is. Death is a process. Seeing the body helps reduce disbelief and shock and everything else. There are things we can do when our pets are dying and after they have died that can help us in this grieving process. I know one of the things we've talked about at times is that while we're focused on caregiving for one, there's still the daily routines for everybody else. So that's always been something that brings us back to the current needs. Routines are so much a part of how we care for our animals all the way through.

Gail Pope: Definitely.

Karen Wylie: All right, my dear, have we done this topic in, is there anything you would like to say before we close this second part of our conversation about grief?

Gail Pope: I don't think so. I think we've certainly done it justice. It just brings back, for me, the thing that I say all the time, " It's all about love." Particularly in grief, it is about accepting yourself as who you are and how you grieve and taking baby steps through life to continue on.

Karen Wylie: So true. We're not saying providing hospice care for pets makes grief easy. But I think we have described how it can be a little less tangled up with guilt and shock and doubt, and allows you to finish your goodbyes in ways that other paths do not. The grief will still hurt. We're still going to miss them. We're going to miss the love we felt when we had them in our arms but we do learn to move forward. Thank you for being with us today, as always, and we look forward to being with you again next week. Thanks. Bye-bye.

Gail Pope: Thank you. Bye-bye.