Losing A Pet

This goofy girl was my dog, Anita. She was a white and black German Shepard that my husband and I got for our children when they were 8 and 10 years old. Our previous dog had died a couple years earlier and we wanted our kids to have a dog to grow up with.

So we got Anita. My daughter, who was 10 at the time, named her. Like many of this breed, she was smart. She was eager to please. She was loyal and protective and as you can see from the picture, a complete goofball.

For my children, Alex and David, Anita was a constant companion. Inside, outside, no matter where they were, she was with them. She was a mirror to their joy. She was a playmate and a friend and a willing partner for any and all adventures.

So, you can imagine our shock and sadness, when in 2018, at only 8 ½ years old, this sweet, happy dog got sick. I took her to the vet and we started her on some medication but her illness advanced much more quickly than we imagined it would. Over a period of just a few weeks, we watched her get skinnier and skinnier and eat less and less. My daughter had saved up for and paid for her own 10 day trip to Greece with her high school that year and she was scheduled to be gone during spring break. I looked at Anita. I could see the bones in her face. Her hip bones were jutting up and her spine was visible. This formerly, 85 pound dog had almost no meat left on her body and I knew she wasn’t going to make it till Alex got back from her trip. I knew that if we were going to put her down we had to do it before she left.

So on a Saturday morning in March, a vet and a tech came out to our house and gave Anita the injection that would release her spirit from her body and leave us with the white and black, fur covered, body of our family member and our friend.

When I had called the vet’s office a few days earlier, to schedule someone to come out, they asked me if I wanted Anita’s body cremated. I said, “Oh no, we’re going to bury her ourselves.” And when the vet arrived that morning, she asked, again, “Are we taking her with us to be cremated?” And, I said, “Oh no, we’re going to bury her ourselves.”

And so, this is the story of how the kids and I buried our Anita. And how important it was for us to do that and to do it together.

When the vet left, the 3 of us must have sat on the ground and cried non-stop for 20 minutes. We told her all the things we wanted to say, one more time. We pet her. We caressed her. We cried and cried. There was no bottom to our sorrow.

And even though I was grief stricken myself, after a while, I thought, “Ok, we’ve got to do this.”

And so, dragging ourselves up from the ground, my son and I started to look for a spot to dig the grave. I offered a few possible locations but we both rejected them. Then I said, “ You know, she was always on the front porch, looking out over the road. Why don’t we bury her right in the front yard so she’s always there watching over us.” And he agreed.

With a spade in both hands, I got down on my knees and cut into the sod. It was thick and I and peeled it away piece by piece from the topsoil. Then with shovels the two of us dug into the ground and slowly opened up a hole for her. We piled the soil around the top and as it got deeper we scraped the sides to make them straight and pulled out rocks. We dug for 15, then 20 minutes -“What do you think? Is it deep enough?” I asked. “Yeah, maybe we should go a little further.” And so we dug some more. Finally, we stopped. Stepping back and taking a look at our work, I said, “You know what? This is a really nice looking grave. We did good work here.”

We walked back up to where Alex was laying on the ground with her dog. I had suggested that she stay with Anita and keep her company. Now the three of us lifted her body onto a blanket that would serve as a shroud. Then we lifted her shrouded form and placed it in a wheelbarrow. I wheeled her myself down the hill and over to the front where the hole was waiting.

Before we put Anita in the wheelbarrow, I had run into the house to get a few things. Sage. Forsythia flowers. A bell. Now at the graveside, I gave the kids each a handful of dried sage leaves and told them that we were going to bless and consecrate the earth before we placed Anita in it.

As we sprinkled the pungent herbs into the ground, I blessed the grave as a sacred space and thanked the Earth for receiving the body of our friend. Then we sprinkled the tiny yellow forsythia flowers into the grave. And as we sprinkled I said, “These flowers are to symbolize the joy that Anita brought to our lives. They symbolize her spirit which, though it is gone from her body, will be with us forever.”

Then, in what feels like the most significant moment of the whole afternoon, we each grabbed a corner of the blanket that she was wrapped in. On the count of three we lifted her out of the wheelbarrow and together lowered her gently into the ground. Looking down at this reality tore at our hearts and we began to cry all over again. I gave us all some time to let it out and then, through my tears, I offered my thanks to this beautiful creature for all the love she gave us. I asked the kids if they wanted to say anything and they did. They spoke from their hearts and they thanked her and told her that they would love her always.

And then when everyone felt complete, there was only one thing left to do. I rang the bell to signal the end of the ceremony and the three of us each reached for a shovel. Little by little, scoop by scoop, her body was covered with Earth. Earth that we had blessed and thanked and dug with our own labor. We continued like this until the hole was filled in, making sure that all the little pockets and corners had been filled. Tamping it lightly on top, we knew our dear friend lay beneath. It had been incredibly difficult, but now it was over.

When all that remained was a rectangular shaped patch of dirt, in the middle of our lawn, I looked at my children and was, honestly, taken aback at what I saw. Their anguished, overwhelmed, inconsolable faces that had registered a 10 on the grief scale for the last hour and a half, were now a 2 or a 3. They looked calmer. They looked more peaceful. And I couldn’t get over how obvious the change was or how it had happened in such a short period of time.

My concern and my fears, about “how in god’s name are we going to get through this first week”, dissipated. I breathed a sigh of relief and we all went back in the house.

I came across a quote one time that said, “Grief is Love, with no place to go.” And that rings true. What this story illustrates for me however, is that when you perform acts of service for your loved ones after death, whether it’s a pet or a person, you give that love a place to go. Alex and David and I got to form a community around our Anita. We got to hold her in our arms and say all the things we needed to say. We got to do all the things we needed to do, which, for us, included digging the hole in which the earth would receive her and placing her in that hole ourselves.

The difference that being able to do these things for our beloved pet made in our grief process cannot be underestimated. While we miss her and talk about her and love her to this day, our grief was not the anguished, disembodied feeling of “something that I love dearly has been taken from me.” For she was not “taken” from us, and we stayed with her right up until the very end.

While I realize that not everyone has a “yard” in which to bury their pets, I wish to offer the idea that even in that case, there are things people can do to spend time with their beloved animal friends before they are taken off to be cremated.

Merely keeping the animal at home (if it has died at home) for a few hours, can give the family time to process the loss for a while. A special blanket can be chosen in which the animal is wrapped. Flowers or toys can be placed around him or her and everyone affected can take the time to let their tears flow, to say all the things they need to say, to do the little things that feel like acts of love.

And then, when they are ready, the family and loved ones of the animal can move him/her to the car and drive them to the vet where the final disposition can take place. In this way, by participating in the care of the pet, grief is given the ultimate outlet. It is not trapped in the mind and heart and cells of the body, seeking a “place to go.” It has found its place.