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Talk to Shar
By
Shar Howe
LOSING A FAMILY PET
I received several letters reaching out to the lady who wrote me two weeks ago asking for readers to share some of their advice in regards to how to deal with a young child who loses their pet to death. I will share some of the comments from our readers.
Winnipeg, Manitoba - Since the lady asked for others to write in I am
thinking that maybe the pet is sick and dying and has not died yet. My nine year old daughter had a pet dog who was six years old when the dog was diagnosed
with cancer. Our vet suggested that we tell our daughter what was happening and include her on the "loss journey" with my husband and I. We did this. We encouraged her to share her feelings at any time. We in turn would share our feelings and we all talked about how we felt. We also talked about our pet and made a memory book to which we added thoughts, pictures, and tears, along the way. We took our daughter to the vet visits and had our vet explain to her each step her pet was going through in the dying process. We had a funeral and buried her pet. Our daughter is 19 years old today and often mentions how thankful she is for the experience she had with her pet dying. She says she is so much more prepared to deal with losses because she already knew what to expect. She says she was so thankful that we did not hide the truth from her and leave her isolated
in her pain at that time.
Saskatchewan - Our 6 year old daughter lost her cat. The cat was run over by a car. She wanted to keep "Mitsy" in an urn. We had Mitsy cremated and he sits on a shelf in our daughter's bedroom. Our vet says that our daughter will eventually talk less and less about losing Mitsy and will not need to pick up the urn as often, as time goes by.
Edmonton, Alberta - I don't know the personality of this woman's child
but I feel this is worth the sharing. Our daughter
lost her pet monkey when she was 7 years old. She
never cried nor did she talk about her pet dying. It
seemed like she was not even aware that her monkey
had died. I was very concerned for my daughter. I
went to see a counsellor. The counsellor told me to
give it some time and to trust that my daughter would
grieve in the manner and process that she could
handle. She was young enough that she would not of
yet been hearing how people ARE SUPPOSE TO
GRIEVE and would find her own grieving pattern. This
was so difficult for me. I wanted to reach in and be
there for her while I was having it suggested to me
that I respect her boundaries and be ready to be
there for her in the way I wanted to be, when she
reached out to me. One day my daughter asked my
husband and I to buy her another monkey. I was going
to but my husband
said I should talk to the counsellor first. The
counsellor very strongly suggested that I not do that.
She said that if I bought her a replacement she could
continue to just mask her feeling regarding her loss.
She also thought that by saying "no" this might help
my daughter break out of her denial and start dealing
with the loss of what had become her best friend. It
worked. A year later we bought her another monkey.
But, this time she didn't ask us to REPLACE her other
monkey but that she would like another new family
member added to our group.
Folks, this was wonderful! Thank you so much. It always blesses my heart to
see the community reaching out to its members with empathy, compassion and their time to give of themselves. This makes for a healing community.
Added Sharing by Shar
It is very important that we treat a child's first experience (and anyone's experience) re: losing a family pet, with dignity. Often the animal was indeed the child's "best friend." When you give a child as much support as you can it paves the way for her to understand, later in life, that death is a normal process.
All the things that were shared with us by our readers would be of the utmost importance and I won't repeat them as they have already been stated so incredibly well. I will add a few things that come to my mind. If a child wishes to touch their dead pet this is very important. Many children have told me that the fear they had around death was greatly lessened when they remembered touching their dead pet before the animal was put into the ground or cremated. Usually this touching takes place just after the animals dies. The horror stories about what someone must feel like when they are dead would lose its flavor to scare them. Some children do not want to touch their dead pet and this is equally important to respect. We all have different personalities and grieve differently. Learning to respect this in each other can give great support. Some children want to keep a piece of the pet's fur. For them this is comforting. For other children this is too emotionally hard on them. A child can see for themselves that their pet is not suffering when they must be euthanized. What a child can see and be part of is what their reality is. You can tell them that their pet didn't suffer when the vet had to put them to sleep but if they have watched their pet suffer already they may not believe this and may feel guilty for a long long time that they let their "best friend" suffer some more by the way they were put to sleep. A child can hold their pet after the vet had given the pet a pain killer and wrapped a blanket around the pet (perhaps their pet's favorite blanket" ) and be encouraged to say their good-byes while the pet is still alive - should this be the opportunity they have to do so. Then the vet will just gently put the need in a plastic tube that is already taped on to the limb of the pet while telling the child that their pet's eyes will close and they will let their head slowly rest on their legs as if they were falling asleep but they will then be dead. It is a rare occasion that a child will not start grieving when having this much participation in their pet's death. They had a great deal of participation in their pet's life and this should not be taken from them. They had a relationship with this member of the family who now has to move on and away from their life. It can also be very important that the child sees for themselves that their pet truly is dead. No wagging tail, no open eyes, no body movement. It is indeed final. The pet will not be getting better and coming back home.
Expressing our grief is not a sign of weakness but of human humaneness. Children need to learn from parents what goes on in the grieving process. If the adult keeps their feelings all locked up inside themselves the child may view this as the way you deal with losses and death. The grieving WILL come to the surface a other times and if all the child knows is to keep it hidden and silent they will have no learning knowledge of how to deal with feelings around losses and death and will shove them all (over the years) into the basement of their house (their body) until they can't hold it all in anymore. In our adult years this explosion of feelings that just won't stay down anymore often leads to terminal sickness, emotional sickness and distress, among many other ailments physical and/ or mental. Often when a pet is the victim of a hit and run it leaves the child devastated that anyone could hurt their pet so severely as to kill them and not even stop. I have found that this pain can be so deeply severe in a child. It certainly starts to pave the way for a child to not trust adults. A child can benefit often from writing a letter to their pet and telling them how sorry they are that this has happened to them the way it did and share their pain over not only losing their pet but the way it happened. They can let out anger, grief, resentment, mistrust, etc., etc. Whatever feelings they may be experiencing. Then, children can benefit from writing a letter to the hit and run driver and telling them exactly how they are feeling. Even though they do not know who to send it to it is in the writing of the letter and expressing what they need to express that helps the healing process. One parent I know put the letter their son had written to the hit and run driver in the local newspaper. She says her son still (years later) says that he felt heard, supported, validated and that how he felt did matter, when his parents did this for him. I am sure there are many more suggestions you readers can give and all are so helpful as it gives us new ideas in regards to dealing with these situations. In closing, one other suggestion comes to mind. You can ask your vet or Humane Society to put you in touch with a pet bereavement group. Your child will see that she is not alone in her grieving and that others grieve their pets too. The child will gain the support of others who are also going through losses and this often encourages them to open them up to sharing their own pain as they listen to others share.
Very important for all of us at any age is to remember that just because we grieve in a certain way does not mean that others aren't grieving because they don't do it as we do. The best support you can give to another is to listen, accept, not judge whether someone's feelings are right or wrong or good or bad in the way they feel and to remember that we can have empathy for another and through this empathy we mourn with them.
Until next week,
Continue to reach out to each other in your community and help one another on our healing journey's in life. A healing community is a close community.
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