Walking Through Anticipatory Grief: A Labyrinth Reflection with My Cat, Mr. Hope
In this personal reflection, educator and caregiver Karen Wylie shares a moment from her journey with her beloved cat, Mr. Hope. As his illness progressed and anticipatory grief began to settle in, Karen turned to her backyard labyrinth—a quiet, meditative space where she could walk with her emotions, her hopes, and her sorrow. This piece explores how the simple ritual of a labyrinth walk can offer comfort, clarity, and presence when caring for a pet who is still here, but already declining.
Written in 2022 while caring for my beautiful boy, Mr. Hope. This personal reflection explores the quiet depth of anticipatory grief through the metaphor of walking a labyrinth.
Karen also recently shared a short version of Mr. Hope's story in
Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 014:
"When They Know: The Quiet Wisdom of Animals at the End of Life"
Preface: Walking the Labyrinth in the Midst of Anticipatory Grief
In the winter of 2022, I was enrolled in a wonderful human death doula program. One of our assignments invited us to explore our own grief by walking a labyrinth. I didn’t have to go far—I had built one years earlier on our land for myself and my clients.
What began as a class assignment turned into something far more personal: a deep reflection on the anticipatory grief I was living each day, as I cared for our beloved cat, Mr. Hope.
For those of you who follow our work at BrightHaven Caregiver Academy, you may already know that Mr. Hope transitioned peacefully in his sleep on May 23, 2023. He lived nearly a year and a half longer after I wrote the piece below, and he continued to bring us joy every single day.
This writing captures a moment when I was deep in the caregiving role—trying to be honest with myself about how Hope was coping, how I was coping, and how our little family was adjusting to the unknown that lay ahead.
I share it with you now as part of our exploration of anticipatory grief in this week’s podcast episode. I hope it helps you feel less alone if you’re navigating a similar chapter.
Setting an Intention for the Walk
I didn’t have to use the Labyrinth Locator. I built my own labyrinth years ago (a classical 7 path labyrinth), for myself and my clients to use since there wasn’t one in my area. It’s been a quiet companion on my property ever since, offering space for reflection and release.
I walk it once or twice a month just to clear my head about something I’m mulling over, to have a few minutes of quiet where I don’t have to think about what to do or where to go. I see it as a form of meditation. And all I have to do is walk.
Photo Note: The labyrinth we built years ago at our home became a companion during many seasons of loss and reflection.
It’s such a relief sometimes—having a path already laid out for you when so much of life feels like it’s filled with hard decisions.
The beauty of a labyrinth is the structure of it, the defined path that determines for you where you next need to step. You don’t have to make a decision about where you’re going.
That’s the gift of it, really. I feel there are only two decisions to make before beginning a labyrinth walk: what you want to keep in mind while walking, and when you are ready to begin.
Holding Hope: The Weight of Daily Care
As I sat outside the labyrinth to decide what aspect of grief or loss or transition I wanted to focus on, the first thing that came to mind is my cat Hope, a ‘Heintz 57’ mixed breed Tabby boy who showed up in our yard 12 years ago.
Hope is approaching 15 years old, and he looks more like a fine middle aged gentleman of 7-8 years, like there is nothing wrong with him.
But sadly, there is.
Hope was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy 16 months ago. He already had idiopathic cystitis (bladder issues of unknown cause) and has since also been diagnosed with advanced kidney disease, although you’d never know it to look at him.
So although I could think back about any number of personal losses in my past that I could deconstruct for the purpose of this assignment, the anticipatory grief I am feeling about Hope’s health is very much current and pretty much a daily issue since I am the primary caregiver and decision maker about his health.
It’s not a memory—I’m living it now, one day at a time.
Having been down this road with aging pets all too many times, I know that there’s one thing that is critical for me to make sure of: that I have done everything reasonable to keep him with us as long as possible, and give him a good death when that time comes.
That word, reasonable, does a lot of heavy lifting here. It’s a line that moves, depending on the animal and the day.
Regret and guilt complicate the pain of pet loss, and so I try to take significant steps to avoid them when I can. The loss will be bad enough as it is.
So, I chose to walk the labyrinth focused on the general question: How am I doing with Hopey’s situation?
The Questions We Carry as Caregivers
The first thing was to be honest about how Mr. Hope is coping at the moment.
And thankfully, right now—he’s still doing extraordinarily well. Somehow, despite all the downward trends in several body systems, he continues to find a new equilibrium and looks quite healthy.
His activity levels are good, and he responds to all the daily routines with his brother and sister Aussies, and my husband and me. He’s maintaining a good weight. So I feel okay about how he’s doing, how he is feeling about himself.
Am I doing everything I can for him?
This is the question that lives in the hearts of so many caregivers.
For the most part, yes.
We’ve moved from once-a-year wellness visits to quarterly bloodwork and more. Things can happen so fast when pets juggle multiple conditions that by the time you actually see them deteriorating physically it’s usually too late to do anything.
Monitoring gives us options. Not guarantees, but options.
Do I feel my veterinarian is doing everything that can be done? Can I count on her?
Thankfully I can answer a very strong YES.
And that’s everything when you’re walking this path. My vet knows that continually doing thousand dollar cardiac ultrasounds isn’t going to help us at this point. Instead, she’s helped us get creative, try affordable alternatives, and focus on comfort.
Hope has coped beautifully. Since the first Aussie puppy entered his life four years ago, Mr. Hope has learned that I’m very generous with training treats. So no matter what behavior I was rewarding the puppies for, Hope jumped up and expected a treat too. And I made sure he always got one!
So…whenever I walk into the family room each morning, he comes running and jumps on top of the dog crates to receive his treats.
Only now, I first shove a horrible tasting Plavix pill camouflaged with Gerber’s baby food to the back of his throat and follow up quickly with reward treats like Temptations or any other delicious-to-cats morsels. He sits and waits for that, tolerating whatever I do to him, like he knows I’m doing it for him.
And that tiny routine—his jump onto the pups’ crates each morning—gives me a daily snapshot of how he’s doing.
Reaching the Center: What Still Needs to Be Done?
As I reached the center of the labyrinth, I stood quietly and continued sifting through all the other various aspects of Hope’s illness that I think are important...how my husband is coping (since Mr. Hope is actually more his cat than mine), how the pups are adjusting (they actually seem to be a little more solicitous of their older brother these days), and how much I’m willing to force him to eat the pricey Advanced Kidney Care Veterinary food he hates, versus letting him continue to eat the food he loves.
As I turned to walk back through the labyrinth to return to its entrance, I reformulated my question: What do I still need to do?
When Love Looks Like Letting Go Slowly
And this is when I started crying, something I find myself doing a lot lately.
This is the heart of anticipatory grief—the weight of love mixed with the ache of knowing what’s coming.
Almost anytime I see Hope licking the Aussies’ faces or cuddling up with my husband… I tear up. We’re storing memories. I’m taking more photos and videos than ever.
I don’t want professional end-of-life photos. I know I prefer to look at photos of my pets in their prime. So I take my own photos of the quiet moments. The real ones.
My husband and I have discussed how we want to handle Hopey’s death. We know we will have a wake for him with the Aussies so Chey and Livy understand Hopey’s soul has left his body, that he hasn’t just left the house and mysteriously never returned. And we know we want a clay paw print made before he is cremated.
But with those decisions made, we don’t dwell on them. We focus on the Now.
The Walk Back: Small Comforts, One Day at a Time
As long as Hope doesn’t throw a blood clot (saddle thrombus) that can cause paralysis or stroke, there is still medication we can add to the mix that will ensure a more even heart beat. And we know how to administer subcutaneous fluids as needed, if his kidney disease worsens. So there are additional things we can do to extend his time with us while we continue to monitor his quality of life.
Each week I measure the evenness of his intake breath and exhales… so we have a baseline.
It’s such a balancing act with our pets, this determining of how much medical intervention you do for them. They don’t have the same ability as humans to endure something for the short term under the belief that in the long term, the discomfort will be worth it. We can’t explain things to Hope. But just like a child, he seems to be counting on us to take care of him.
If only he could speak. Sometimes, I think he does.
I just try to make sure I’m thinking about the right things for him, at the right time.
At least for today, things are good. Tomorrow morning I will take Hope for his every-three-weeks Adequan shot (for arthritis and blood thinning), which is our new normal.
For me, the primary comfort walking the labyrinth provided this afternoon was having those 15 minutes simply to focus on me and Hope and how we were doing. Usually my thoughts are more piecemeal, more like ‘daily updates’ I write in my care journal, or in response to my vet’s recommendations. I really haven’t taken the time to sift through so many thoughts and feelings all at one time as I did today.
That’s the gift I didn’t know I needed—just space to feel all of it, at once. Although my eyes have become pretty red writing up my experience, I’m really glad I walked the labyrinth path today.
Thank you for walking a little of this path with me. If you’re living through your own version of anticipatory grief, know you’re not alone.
"It’s all so beautiful. That’s the thing—it’s like, Tim and I will still cry about Mr. Hope because we think of that night and that day and so many aspects of his life with us. It’s so wonderful. It’s all together and they do give us these… these swan songs."
— Karen Wylie,
excerpt from Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 014:
"When They Know: The Quiet Wisdom of Animals at the End of Life"
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