Those of you who have followed my work know that there is scarcely a picture of me without my beloved Marcel. As he was fifteen and had been showing signs of decline for more than a year, losing him wasn’t entirely unexpected, but the profound sense of loss is nonetheless just as acute.I have had pets all my life and had gone through this before, but prior experience does nothing to make it easier when the time comes again, to say goodbye. So, I began thinking more about this very special bond between pets and their “persons,” and what makes it so painful to let go.
We’ve heard it said so many times… that our pets give us “unconditional love.” This may be true, but it never seemed to go far enough and didn’t quite capture the depth of the relationship we have with our beloved pets. There’s something ineffable there that goes beyond the notion of unconditional love.
A Rather Poetic Take—
While grieving one night, an image of two souls connected appeared in my mind… When we live together with another soul, be it another human or a pet, our souls grow together and become one. Our lives merge… our habits and tastes merge. We come to depend on each other… we look for each other, we rush home for each other.
When we feel like shit, we cuddle in front of the TV together. We eat together, cry together, grow together, change together, lean on each other, literally and figuratively. We even hear each other breathe, and when the house is quiet, it is nonetheless full with the silent presence of another… one who loves you and is glad you’re there.
Then, when one soul is not physically there anymore, it leaves a gaping wound that needs to become whole again. Because we have become two souls connected, the loss of one is like losing a part of ourselves.
A Parental Dynamic—
The relationship we have with our pet is not just a trifle… not just something on the sidelines of our life, or something “less than” our other more real relationships with human companions. It is an authentic relationship that deepens with time. It is very much at the core of our thoughts and how we arrange our every day.
We know each other’s habits. We communicate with a look. The connection is as deep and as meaningful as with any other kind of relationship. And it is hard for the mind and the heart to accept when any deep relationship has come to an end.
But when it comes to a pet, it is like a parental relationship in many ways, especially inasmuch as we are caregivers, and there is something counter to nature to see your “child” go …to let it go, rather than continue to take care of him/her.
Despite the fact that “rationally,” we know their natural lifespan is much shorter than ours, there’s a part of us that simply can’t make sense out of it when that time comes. When they are suddenly no more, the world feels all wrong. The heart still feels that they need us. And the realty is just too bizarre and makes no sense.
The event of their passing thus leaves us in a kind of shock. And nothing but time restores us to a place where we feel normal again and can look upon our memories and photos with pure love, rather than sadness.
Something that Helped Me—
I found many meditations and essays on grief, but they only helped a little bit. Of all the things I read, there was one thing that someone said that did help:
A lifetime of joy travels with them.
We tend to fixate on thefinal moments. I know I was doing that… Was he comfortable enough? How long was he aware of my presence? And so forth. Grieving is a strange, irrational and intense process.
But when I shifted my focus beyond the immediate moments at the end, and I looked over our life together, in its entirety, I could envision all the joy, all the adventures and all the love, stretching out over our fifteen years together… the car rides, the stroller rides, the walks at the marina, the park… the restaurants, the doggy friends, running through the house with the “crazies” after getting a bath. The cuddly mornings in bed. I could see how all of it was a part of him. It was embedded in his soul. And his spirit, now released, will carry it all. All of it, back to his puppy-hood.
The Meditation—
May I have the courage and the bravery to let go… to let go of him/her… knowing that all things must pass. All things must pass.
May I always remember that a lifetime of joy travels with him/her.
May I always know in my heart that I gave my beloved the best of all possible lives with the resources that I had at the time.
May I take comfort in knowing that love never really dies… it lives on as a kind of spiritual force in the ethers. The love we shared lives on.
May I remember our time together with love, rather than sadness.
May I remember that they are never really gone… that their spirit is connected to ours with an unbreakable, energetic tendril, like a golden ribbon of love that is tethered to our heart.
May I be fulfilled in the knowing that there is meaning in my experience of loss… in the knowing that I have assumed this pain in order to spare them of theirs. And in the knowing that their soul came here to be loved… and loved they were! That was the gift that I gave … that was what we experienced together… LOVE.
Donna Quesada Schollhammer 