The death of a pet can be devastating. Here are some ways to work through the grief

Two years ago this month, my cat Zsa Zsa died while I was out of town.

He had a long life. I adopted him when he was 13, and we shared a wonderful two years together. He was sweet and weird, playful and vocal (he woke me up each morning with a plaintive cry, sounding more like a human baby than a feline). He was my source of comfort during the worst of the pandemic. I thought — I hoped — that I had more time with him.

Looking back, I see now that I didn’t really know what to do with my grief over losing him, or my guilt over not being there when he crossed the rainbow bridge. Though I would never say this to a friend, I told myself that I should keep my sadness small, at least on the outside. It was 2021 and many people around me had lost so much.

It wasn’t just the moment in history we were living through that caused me to feel this way. In the West, there are virtually no cultural rituals to help us cope with the death of pets. Such mourning is done behind closed doors, even though loving and losing animals is a nearly universal experience.

One reader shared that she’s going through this right now: “I’m going through some life transitions, which include the recent death of my 16yr old Chihuahua (that was also a major source of emotional support for me). I’m struggling to find positive resources and activities to help process and fill the time I used to spend with her.”

This week, we’ll explore why our relationships with our pets can be so meaningful, common experiences after we lose our beloved animals, and ways to move through the grief of losing a pet in a culture that doesn’t make space for it.

Why it’s so painful when we lose our pets

To understand why it can be so hard when we lose our pets, I want to step back and talk about something many of us already know in our bones: That our bonds with our pets are uniquely profound.

On the scientific level, there’s plenty of research pointing to the health benefits of caring for an animal. Having a pet has been linked to decreased cortisol (a stress hormone), blood pressure and feelings of loneliness. Pets may also boost cognitive function in older adults. This can all be true for meaningful relationships we have with people, too.

Perhaps the biggest reason our love for our animals can be so immense is how different they are than our human loved ones.

“The relationship between people is fraught with all kinds of complexities: judgment, betrayal, anger, hurt, frustration, ” said the Rev. Kaleel Sakakeeny, an ordained animal chaplain and pet loss and bereavement counselor. “And they’re never easy. With an animal, that qualification doesn’t exist.”

The way we care for pets can be akin to how we care for children. “We clean their ears. We bathe them. There’s a lot of touch,” said Marina Resa, a psychotherapist in Los Angeles who specializes in pet grief. “They know us better than some of our friends and family do. It’s a deep, consistent, intimate relationship.”

If you live with an animal for 12 or 15 years, your brain develops patterns around that connection, Sakakeeny explained — from what time you feed your pet to the dopamine hit you get when your buddy ecstatically greets you.

And they bring out the best in us. “They’re the angels of our better selves. So when they pass, a part of ourselves can feel lost too,” Sakakeeny said. “You lose the mind you developed in concert with the animal. There’s a void where that pure, simple relationship was.”

Resa noted there are secondary losses, too, like the regular exercise of daily walks with your dog, the people you ran into at the dog park, or the coffee shops and hiking trails you enjoyed together.

Sakakeeny knows what this empty feeling is like. In 2016, he lost his charismatic black cat, Kyro, to old age. “Some animals are big loves, some are small. Kyro, he was a huge love. He filled our house and he filled my heart,” he said.

When Kyro died, Sakakeeny was overcome with an unbearable sadness. He began drinking heavily. Therapy wasn’t helping either, he said, because his clinician was treating his issue as regular depression. “It was an emotional and spiritual problem,” he said. “It was nothing to be cured. It needed to be processed and healed over time.”

The experience was so profound that Sakakeeny, who worked for many years as a journalist covering the Middle East, went to theology school and became a ordained pastor and a pet grief counselor. “It was as if Kryo was leading me in a direction that was at least as big as his love was,” he told me.

Like Sakakeeny, many people experience the death of a pet like they would a family member. “What’s different is that society doesn’t recognize it as much,” Resa said. “People are less likely to reach out and say supportive things. Instead, people will ask you why you don’t get another pet if they think you’re having a hard time. If we ask for time off from work, our bosses might not understand. We can feel embarrassed by how strong our emotions are around the loss.”

In the U.S., we don’t do the best job at honoring death in general, especially when compared with other cultures. Acknowledging death makes us feel uncomfortable. And, as I’ve written about before, American culture tells us that grief is a short-term emotional problem that needs to be fixed. That way of thinking is even more pronounced when a pet has died.

“We haven’t quite committed to or accepted the profound nature between us and animals,” Sakakeeny said.

It can make the process of grieving a pet incredibly lonely and isolating.

“Without rituals to acknowledge the grief, there’s no place for the grief to go,” Sakakeeny said. “We feel like we have no right to have it, we feel ashamed. And this can make us seriously sick, from digestive issues to lack of sleep.”

Rituals for grieving the death of a pet

We each process grief in our own way. How we navigate the death of pet will depend on how they died and what kind of relationship we had with them.

It’s worth trying whatever form of expression resonates with you. For example, musician Miley Cyrus channeled her immense sadness over the death of her dog, Floyd, into her 2015 album “Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz.” Some people get tattoos of their pets.

“Rituals are like tributaries to the ocean of grief,” Sakakeeny said. “They allow the grief to move through us.”

Here are some suggestions from our experts for rituals that will help you honor your pet’s life:

• Hold a memorial for your pet with people who knew and cared for your dog.
  
• Plant a tree, a garden, or a stone marked with your pet’s name in the yard. This could be in a spot where your animal liked to sniff around, or just a spot you’d like to visit regularly to think about your pet.
  
• Imagine the color, shape and size of your heart when your pet was alive, and then paint it or draw it. Do the same for what you envision your heart looking like now amid your grief.
  
• Let yourself look at pictures of your pet, and recall the moment the photos were taken. Notice what feelings it brings up. Take your time, and don’t it all the once.
  
• Write a letter for you pet, letting them know how much you loved them. “This gives you space to talk about all the components of the loss — things you regret, what you want to say sorry for, the things you miss the most,” Resa said.
  
• Draw a timeline of the time you had with your animal, either with words or pictures. “It reminds us that there’s this whole chunk of life you had together no one can take away,” Resa said, “even if another pet comes into our lives.”
  
• Volunteer at a local animal shelter or rescue organization — but only if you feel drawn to being around animals right now.

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If you walk away with anything today, let it be that the grief you feel after you lose a pet is valid, no matter how long ago they died. It deserves your attention.

Until next week,

Laura

If what you learned today from these experts spoke to you or you’d like to tell us about your own experiences, please email us and let us know if it is OK to share your thoughts with the larger Group Therapy community. The email [email protected] gets right to our team. As always, find us on Instagram at @latimesforyourmind, where we’ll continue this conversation.

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More perspectives on today’s topic & other resources

Sakakeeny’s nonprofit, Animal Talks, is a great resource for those who are mourning a pet. Animal talks offers guidance from pet grief counselors and online healing circles. “We know from experience that sharing your grief and pain with others also on their journey lightens the burden and opens the heart and mind to moving forward, to healing,” the facilitators write in their event description.

Other interesting stuff

The intersection of mental health and language is personal. As bilingual second-generation immigrants trying to speak in their parents’ language, Times writers Helen Li, Phi Do and Ada Tseng were often failing to find words to adequately express what they were going through. Now, they’re trying to bridge that gap with their amazing project that provides a starter kit for dialogue about mental health in Mandarian Chinese. “It’s important to note that talking about mental health can be delicate and triggering, and many people will never feel safe enough to broach these topics with loved ones,” they wrote. “But we hope that these words spark conversations between you and your families.”