OVER THE RAINBOW
BRIDGE
Our animal family members bring boundless joy and unconditional love, and are such an integral part of our lives that we can’t imagine being without them. Sadly, it’s an inescapable reality that, one day, we will have to bid them farewell. This is an incredibly hard process, made worse by not knowing what to expect. This regular column aims to demystify it in order to help you when the time comes for your pet to cross the Rainbow Bridge. GOING THROUGH GRIEF
Your pet has passed away and your heart feels like it’s been torn from you, leaving both an echoing emptiness and deep heaviness within. You want to tell everyone about them, cry on someone’s shoulder, scream your sorrow to the world… but it’s ‘just an animal’, so you shouldn’t be so sad. Right? Absolutely not! Your pet is your best friend, child, family member, cheerleader, consoler, and so much more. Every moment of their lives is in your hands and part of your routine. They need you and you need them. So, their death is a truly devastating loss, and you have every right to feel heartbroken. Unfortunately, because society doesn’t always see it that way (or we think that it won’t), the usual grief support systems and sympathy tend to be less or absent, or we are fearful of reaching out, lest we are judged. But you’ll be surprised at how many people know exactly what you’re going through. In fact, research has shown that the pain of losing a loved pet is comparable to, or worse than, the loss of a human family member. Your pet is family and you were blessed to have had them in your life, so grieving when they’re gone is completely understandable and normal.
UNDERSTANDING THE FEELINGS OF GRIEF
Grief is not one thing; it is a non-linear rollercoaster with many stages that can start at any time, from long before your pet passes away, until days later. Everybody experiences it differently - some go through all the stages in the below order, some
38
go back and forth, some only experience a few of them… Each feeling is normal and should be acknowledged, felt and accepted, not avoided and/or feared.
• SHOCK AND DENIAL: These buffer you
against overwhelming emotions. Shock numbs you and makes it easier to cope at first. Denial - of a diagnosis, the reality that your pet is gone, and even that you’re grieving at all - also provides space to process.
• PAIN: Pain can be a tiny trickle or an all-consuming torrent and should not be suppressed (think about what happens if you try to hold back a river). Cry if you want to, stare into space, scream into your pillow – do what you need to do, without self-judgement or censorship. If you can’t mourn whenever you want, set aside time, for example, after everyone has gone to bed or while sitting in your car. • GUILT AND REGRET: These are extremely common (and usually unfounded). Regret is about what you wish you had done; guilt is about what you wish you hadn’t. You may feel guilty for your decisions, how you handled their medical care, if you were too hasty in putting them to sleep or not hasty enough, for feeling relief when a suffering pet passes, for every decision you made. You might be consumed with remorse for every time you didn’t play with them, came home late, reprimanded them, etc. Constant secondguessing is part of this, too. Remind yourself that your aim was never to cause them suffering – you did what you could at the time.
JANUARY 2022 | PETPRINTS
