Grief is a hard lesson but one the animals teach so well!
This time of year – Spring – is a harder time for me with anniversaries of all the animals I have had as an adult that are now dead have passed over in the Spring. From 8th March to 15th May I have multiple anniversaries of their passing, and that of my husband too. Today is one. Rufus, my people-aggressive dog, had a short but determined illness that took him four years ago today. Luckily I have had four clear years but one of my dogs is ageing too fast for my liking so I know I have another one coming up on the horizon. I am trying to get as prepared as I can without hurrying it along, without creating the focus where the energy flows. Being prepared helps us cope when the time comes.
Our animals, dogs particularly (although 25 years with my horse was not long enough), live short lives, much shorter than ours and we know that loving and having them with us means a loss when they leave us too soon. But we love them and have them with us anyway – they are worth it. The worse thing we can have after they pass is regrets – regrets of the things we didn’t do with them, the time we didn’t spend with them, the times we were impatient with them or told them off for a trivial thing. A huge lesson that they teach us is to make the most of the time we have with them, and to make that time count the best that we can. Be the best people that we can be with them, be the people they deserve to have. The attitude of gratitude can help with this and is, indeed, one of the lessons gifted to me by one of my dogs who has passed and you can read my blog post about gratitude here. I wrote her the longest letter of gratitude when she passed that went with her as she was cremated – the words and energy of both her and gratitude are in her ashes and in my memory.
One of my regrets with my earlier animals is of not having any photographs truly good enough to blow up to a large size and display on the wall. I have some photos that bring back lovely memories but not any that are really stunning and of good enough quality to enlarge for wall art. Humans are very visual animals, sight is our dominant sense, and this can be so important to us to have such large and prominent memories to constantly see, to be reminded of just how the love shone from their eyes and how their ears and facial expressions were and how they looked at us just so. Capturing this, and the bond between you, is a service that we pet photographers can do for you. My website is here if you are in the Tenbury Wells area.
Acceptance is key, it is not easy but learning to accept that they have to go and when they do, that they have gone, really helps with the grieving process. The grieving process is really important and should not be suppressed. There is often a view that she or he was ‘just a dog’ or ‘just a cat’ or ‘just a horse’ or ‘just an animal’ but those of us who love our animals and value them for who they are and for their part in our lives and families know they are much more than this and we should feel no guilt for grieving them and we should not be shamed into ‘snapping out of it’ after a short period of time. The grieving process is very real and necessary over the loss of our animals as well as over people and should be honoured. The love that they give us is just as much, if not more, than that from other people.
Grief is the other side of the Love coin and when you feel the love alongside the grief it really helps to hold you up through the grieving process. It helps to feel the love still that you felt for your pet and that they felt for you. When you know that the soul carries on and it is the body that is left and the soul of the pet is there with you, around you, in your heart and loving you still, that helps too. With my horse I felt her from the first by my right hand side, by my shoulder. It was a huge comfort. With one of my dogs I used to whisper her name very softly and I felt her there with me. With Rufus he mostly comes on our walks still and I ‘see’ him and I feel his playful, joyful energy. With another of my dogs I felt him on the bed with me the first night he was gone, it was like a physical weight. He had the dog version of MS and was paralysed in the last 18 months of his life so this was special to know that he was free from pain and restriction and chose to show me this and to be there with me. They never leave us really.
Emotions like guilt and shame hold us back from letting them go and from us being able to move forwards. A very important distinction between ‘moving forward’ and ‘moving on’ – we are afraid to move on because we think it is disrespectful or we will leave them behind and feel guilty, however this is not helpful to us or to their souls. When you change the words to ‘moving forward’ you feel you are moving forward together and this is so healing and wonderful and empowering.
If you feel stuck in grief a most wonderful way of moving forward – the grieving process is a process and should move through its stages – is to help someone else, be it a family member or friend, helping at an animal shelter or other charity, or adopting another pet. What better way to honour the life of the one you ‘lost’ than to give life and love to another by adopting one. This never replaces the love you have for the one who has passed, it is additional love created by the ‘loss’ so never feel guilty for this either.
It really is true that by loving and losing many animals it expands our hearts more and more – we really should be grateful for this heart expansion when the harder times come to let them go as well as the love they gave us when they were here with us physically.
“Love is the bridge between you and everything.”
~Rumi