Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 061: Rituals, Remembrance, and the Love That Doesn’t End (Part 4)

Episode Transcript: 

Karen Wylie: Welcome back to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. I'm Karen Wylie, and this is the fourth and final episode in our series with Judith Eve Rosen, licensed clinical social worker, veterinary social worker, and author of "Life After Pet Loss: Daily Reflections for Working through Grief". In this final conversation, we turn towards something central to the way Gail and I approach this work. The idea that love doesn't end at death. It changes form but it doesn't end. Judith shares some genuinely fascinating neuroscience. About what happens in our brains in the days after loss. We talk about the power of ritual, about disenfranchised grief, and about what it means to carry love forward. We're glad you're here for it.

I wanted to talk a little bit about rituals and the continuing bond that we all search for and seek  to establish for ourselves when we experience the physical loss of our pets. That's something Gail and I talk a lot about through honoring rituals. Gail started a three day honoring ritual after the deaths of residents at her sanctuary. 

Gail, you want to just describe that briefly for people who are listening to this who may not be aware of the BrightHaven three-day honoring ritual?

Gail Pope: Gosh, it's a long story, so I'll be as brief as I can— you know me and long stories! Basically it was after hearing about scientific evidence of energy staying in the body after death that made me stop and start thinking about the way we treat death. We fear it as a culture and then when somebody dies, their body gets taken away as quickly as possible. The more I was learning about the world of energy, it occurred to me that, "Oh wow! This kind of stopped me in my tracks."

That's the root of where it all began. It's a much longer story, obviously, but we decided to honor our animals after death by basically creating a beautiful area where we would have flowers and candles. We would wash their bodies, groom their fur, put their favorite teddies or toys around them. We did it with our horses, we did it with goats, we did it with chickens, we did it with anybody that died. At first, it felt strange and our volunteers were a bit nervous of seeing a dead body honored in this fashion. 

But little by little people started to feel warmth and comfort. It was as though the animal who had died, although it was purely their physical house that people were sitting and watching, they could feel this kind of warmth and connection with the ceremony itself. So we generally called it our "Three Day Process" but sometimes it was shorter and sometimes it was longer. For us, it was just when we felt that energetic connection. The same fare-thee-well for the next leg of your journey. That kind of feeling. So it was very beautiful. We've done it for many years now.

Judith Rosen: Yes and I think that's lovely and I think ritual is so important. Especially, the thing with mourning like in Mexico— there's a Day of the Dead. That's a few days before the Day of the Dead but the 27th of October is for honoring animals. There's some other religions that do different ways of honoring them. But in general, we don't have established communal mourning rituals for our pets the way we do for our humans. That's why a lot of people are creating their own because you are getting comfort from the other people. You are doing that as a group. You don't feel quite as alone in the process.

I don't know enough about energy, healing, or this is not an area that I've studied but what I do know is that anytime that you can use visualization in such a powerful way to continue the bond. So to me whether the energy is physically there or not, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because you can walk in and be the most evidence-based, atheist, non-spiritual person, fine. Just picture yourself hugging your dog. You're going to feel better because I think one of the most powerful treatments, if you want to call it that, for wellbeing, and definitely for grief is our imagination.

I picture when I miss Joanie, I picture her in my lap and I visualize her weight on me and her warmth and her purring. That makes me feel better! I think that's where our continuing bond is when we no longer have the physical presence, like you were saying, the continuing bond is what keeps us bonded with them. That can last forever. As we remember them, that's why Memorial is what that means that we keep remembering them and that keeps them close to us. What I like about this three day ritual too is I think it helps the reality of the loss be clearer.

I talk about Mary Francis O'Connor's work in the book. I love her. She's a neuroscientist and she's done the neurobiology of grief. So she's written the book, "The Grieving Brain". I don't know if you've seen it. The grieving body is fascinating stuff but it's this idea that one of the things that's happening with our grieving is that we've got two kinds of brain processes going on at the same time. The one that has been there at the euthanasia, when you were present at that moment and they're now gone - conflicting with the brain process that's driven by attachment. Where your brain is just so used— they've been with you for the last 10 years, and your brain is predicting they're going to be there.

I didn't understand it until this week as well as I understand it now. It's going to sound silly but I'm having some work done in my kitchen. There's no sink in there right now, instead there was plastic sheeting put up. I'm an old lady. I wake up in the middle of the night wanting a glass of water. So I'm half awake and I get up to go to the kitchen to get my glass of water and I walked *bam* right into the plastic sheeting and woke up. 

It just woke me up so much and I realized, "Oh, this is what Mary Francis O'Connor's talking about." I really expected the sink to be there because the sink's always been there.

it was a shock when I hit that plastic just like after the loss of our beloved animal. The next few days that you wake up in the morning, you have that split second where you think they're going to be there. Or when you walk in the door, you expect they're going to come running to the door and every time they don't, it hurts. So you've got that one part of your brain saying, "I know they're gone" and the other part of the brain's saying, "Yes but I expect them to still be there". And that'll take a few weeks to resolve.

That's what can drive the grief, I think. But that's what I like about this ritual because it helps that other part of your brain be retrained that, "Yes, this is the phase they're in now and they're with us but it's different."

Karen Wylie: Gail and I met each other, what, three and a half years ago but—

Judith Rosen: You seem like you've been friends. I'm sorry, I have to interrupt you right now. It seems like you've been friends for 20 years. I'm shocked. I'm shocked at that. Wow!

Karen Wylie: Our lives were parallel in so many ways in terms of what we experienced and learned from our animals that when we did get together, there were just so many automatic knowings.

Judith Rosen: I love that.

Karen Wylie: We have a shorthand about so many things. It's extraordinary and something I cherish all the time every day, my dear.

Judith Rosen: Aw, that's wonderful. Yay.

Karen Wylie: But what I wanted to mention is that when Gail had the sanctuary and when an animal died, it was more of a public experience. She had volunteers so they would be in the living room and around. My husband and I, when we would lose an animal, it was just us.

But I too was honoring my animal who had just died, I would arrange them in their favorite bed. I was doing it so that, as I was crying and staring at them. I'm going over and like it's hard to stop petting them except they're not responding anymore because they're gone. I was doing it for the other animals to understand what had happened. I learned not to just take an animal away and not have it come back. Then the remaining animals don't cope as well. They don't understand that.  They can’t accept death unless it's available for them to understand.

Judith Rosen: It's an interesting concept and I've talked to different hospice veterinarians— the ones in-home. It can vary according to the animal as well, according to the individual because some really respond to it and it's comforting. Some ignore it completely. It's so interesting. So I'm bringing that up because it's just like how we humans process our grief differently so that we can have a different reaction.

Karen Wylie: Especially if it's a hospice situation where the physical decline is taking place over time. That also allows a readiness, a higher readiness of the other furry animals in the family to understand what's happening.

Gail Pope: That immediately brings me to— I've got so many stories of a cat or a dog in their dying process, which could be weeks or a month or more, surrounded every single day by other animals who are just keeping company with them and some might actually be trying to steal food! But we had some lovely, beautiful gatherings and some gorgeous photographs of animals honoring cats with dogs, dogs with cats.

Judith Rosen: Aw, that's lovely.

Gail Pope: And then after the death, that's something that I've learned, I grieved with my animals before they died and then celebrated their life afterwards. That's how I've been helped through life. I've seen after a cat or a dog who has died and has been surrounded by other animals or maybe even just one or sometimes two. But watching other animals, and how they treated the body afterwards: some cats would literally step over it as though just not there anymore and others would come along and they'd sit down and sit with the body.

Judith Rosen: That's what I meant.

Gail Pope: So that's what reminded me of that. We all behave differently with those that we've loved, not loved or loved more. Every relationship is different and it's just the same for animals.

Judith Rosen: Absolutely. I do write about that as well in the book is how to care for the remaining animals in your home. To keep them in mind and some of the things that you want to monitor for because they can get depressed. They can miss their buddy. What you want to talk to your vet about if they're not eating, not drinking or not, just the same kind of quality of life stuff that we know so well. Then to play with them a little bit more and give them their favorite treats and give them some extra love. It can be hard when you're grieving to do that but it's something that we have to address.

Karen Wylie: Oh yes, absolutely. One of the rituals that we've adopted and offer on a monthly basis at BrightHaven is what we call the Rose Ceremony. It's named that because BrightHaven used to have roses everywhere when it was a physical sanctuary. It's intended to be a celebration of life and people can come. It's not a grief support event or an ongoing support group but it's an opportunity to bring a special little coat or collar or something that you have from your pet. You can submit photographs and you can share a story about your pet.

Sometimes people are with us days or a week after they've lost their pet and other times people come many months or years later. But I guess I'm sharing that because I'd like us to talk a little bit about something that I know is important to you too. That is the fact that our grief is disenfranchised. Our pet loss grief is not something that society generally embraces or understands. We have difficulty with death in general with humans, but with pets it's even more, and so what would you like to see change in our society that would be more accommodating of grief?

Judith Rosen: Yes. The first practical thing, I did a reel on this in my Instagram, is I think we should have pets included in bereavement leave from work. I know everything is about the bottom line but just like we were talking about the doctor patient talking about if you have a pet in the house, how that builds rapport. This can build engagement with your employees if they see that you care enough about them. That they can stay home for a couple of days after their pet passed away or give any kind of caregiving thing they may need to do. I think that's a big place to start and that would bring acceptance I think a little bit more.

Karen Wylie: It'd be wonderful because we're disabled at work when we lose an animal anyway. So why not give us the time? That's something that Gail and I would understand when we experience loss, we don't expect each other the next day to be able to handle a day's work in our usual way.

Judith Rosen: Exactly.

Karen Wylie: Why wouldn't corporate America do that too?

Judith Rosen: Give yourself, even if it's not like weeks, even if it's just two or three days, I think that's something. Then I think in terms of how we speak about grief, speaking more about pet loss. I consider that part of my mission is to talk. I love to talk. You could tell from our conversation today. So I'm trying to use it for good.

Karen Wylie: That's right. That's why you're here. That's why we wanted to have you here.

Judith Rosen: Yes. Then I think about the other thing — there's some really lovely books out there. I have a list in the back of my mind with several suggestions. I think talking to kids more and involving children more in mourning the loss of their pets. Really making sure that you're talking to them, involving them in certain rituals. It's not necessarily saying they need to be present at euthanasia because I don't work with kids. So I don't know what's age appropriate in terms of that but at least let them express their emotions in their own way.

One of my favorite rituals that I have in the book is the memory jar. I didn't come up with it. It's a practice that we do but you hand out pieces of paper to everybody in the family, maybe origami paper. Each person writes down a memory, at least one memory, folds it up and puts it in the jar. Then when somebody is feeling the loss, they can reach into the jar and read it. What I suggest is that you encourage your kids to participate in that. If they're not yet old enough to write, then you have an older child be their scribe or you're their scribe because it'll get the family talking about memories about the beloved animal and also how they're feeling about it. If we were involving kids and educating them more at a younger age in it, then I think as they grow older they'll take that with them into adulthood. Maybe that's how we could resolve this.

Karen Wylie: Interesting that you talk about trying to change things with children because one of the first certification programs I was going through on grief was asking us to think back to when we were children in our first losses. For most of us it was a pet and so "What did you learn from that?" and almost all of us were learning horrible lessons because our parents had lied to us: "The pet just disappeared."

Judith Rosen: Yes which is worse because that's ambiguous grief. Grief which is more traumatic than—

Karen Wylie: Exactly!

Judith Rosen: Yes, I know.

Karen Wylie: Exactly. That was years ago or decades ago for me and for many of the people in the group. Like I said, it was the first human loss but we were thinking of our first losses. Pets have shorter lifespans. So of course, for a lot of us, our pet losses were our first experiences with grief. We often don't experience that in any kind of positive way that begins forming some strength and ability to understand it and integrate it.

Judith Rosen: And there are few set rituals for it so that they could go to a funeral if they're old enough, they could go to a Shiva, they could go to a wake and be around other people and learn from that experience. So I think having maybe some more outlets or formal ways of mourning, I think that would be helpful as well. Absolutely.

Karen Wylie: I have to agree with you on that.

Gail Pope: Yes without a doubt.

Karen Wylie: Any other things you would like to add to that in terms of what you'd like to see in our society?

Judith Rosen: There's a lot more beyond pet loss.

Karen Wylie: We’ve got to keep focused here.

Judith Rosen: I'm a social worker but I think support in our institutions. Like I said even at work. Support if you miss a day. If you're in university and you have to miss school, things like that. Look, what is it, 65 million households? Is it?

Karen Wylie: That's about right. I think yes.

Judith Rosen: Two thirds of households in our country have pets— at least one pet. That's a lot. So like, what are we doing here? Though, I am noticing a shift. I notice that I don't get weird responses when I tell people I'm a pet loss therapist anymore as much as I used to at first. "People pay for that?" and I was like *gestures*. "Do people need that?" It's "Yes" but now I'm like, oh my God!

I was mailing books out. I mailed to each of my clients because I have anecdotes in the book but I changed gender and pet. So if it's like a female patient of mine that had a dog, I said, look, "When you read it, it's going to be a guy with a cat, but it's you."

Karen Wylie: So you maintain confidentiality.

Judith Rosen: Good for you. I'm respecting HIPAA. So I go and I'm like with 16 books and I'm at the counter at the post office. There's this big strong like male guy that's male in both senses, really macho. I was like, "This is my first book. That's what's in here." And he's "Wow! What did you write a book about?" And I said, "I wrote about pet loss."

Don't you know, he starts telling me about how he had a couple of tropical fish and one of the fish that he really loved died and he was devastated. He said, "Because I would come home from work and I would sit down and I would just sit in front of the aquarium. I would just get such joy watching them swim. My buddies tease me like you wouldn't believe— Why is a big guy like you crying about a fish?"

I was so touched by that, and he said, "It's good that you're doing this because we need this." It felt so good to hear that. So anybody can relate to this. You never know. It's not just cat ladies like me that get upset.

Karen Wylie: Or cat and dog ladies like me.

Judith Rosen: Yes, exactly. I'm a frustrated dog lady. I told you that before, but—

Karen Wylie: That's right. That's right.

Judith Rosen: Not allowed. Not allowed.

Karen Wylie: I'm glad to hear that last story because that does mean that you've seen that incremental change when you're describing what you do. That there's at least a little bit more of an understanding of what you do. That more people need help, that more people could use the support and acknowledgement of the loss and how they feel about it.

Judith Rosen: And will continue to spread the word about veterinary social work as well which I think will help.

Karen Wylie: Absolutely. At some point we have to bring this conversation to a close, even though I think we could go on and on as we do here.

Judith Rosen: Oh yes.

Karen Wylie: But we'll bring this conversation to a close because Judith, I really think we've covered so many topics in a thorough way. That this is really going to be a meaningful conversation for many people to learn aspects of pet loss and grief that they didn't know about. Give them a better understanding of themselves and how to support their friends and family members. I think the way you're describing your work, you're really bringing validation.

Judith Rosen: That's the most important thing.

Karen Wylie: That the experience so many people have where they don't feel supported. So we hope that this conversation with Judith Eve Rosen has helped you feel a little less alone in your experience of loving and losing your pet. If you're looking for additional support, Judith's book: "Life After Pet Loss: Daily Reflections for Working Through Grief". I'm going to make sure I get this up one more time.

Judith Rosen: Yes, thank you.

Karen Wylie: You're very welcome. It really offers a gentle day-to-day companion for working through the grieving process. And Judith, where can people find you and learn more about your work?

Judith Rosen: They can follow me on Instagram. It's @MyPetLossTherapist. They can follow me. I post daily there and tips and some things from the book as well. My website is JudithEveRosen.com and I'll make sure that you have the spelling of both for the show notes as well.

Karen Wylie: Perfect!

Judith Rosen: People that want to follow, I will respond. I hope people have a chance to look at the book if they can.

Karen Wylie: Wonderful, we'll include that link in the show notes as well as your social media where people can connect with you and where they can find the book.

Judith Rosen: That'd be great.

Karen Wylie: So we're grateful for you, Judith, for sharing your perspective on grief, healing, and the many forms that love can take even after loss. As always, we thank you for being here with us, for loving your animals so deeply and for walking this path with us. Bye-bye now.

Judith Rosen: Thank you.

Gail Pope: Bye-bye. Thank you.

Karen Wylie: We are so grateful to Judith Eve Rosen for her time, her heart, and her expertise. Across these four conversations, you'll find her contact information website and book link in the show notes. And to you, thank you. Thank you for the love you give your animals and for the courage it takes to care for them through the hard parts. As Gail always says, you did your best and you did it with love, and that is enough.