Many narratives besides mine are unearthed by Googling
“pet loss” or “pet grief.” Apart from the rainbow bridge, many sites feature
places for owners who have lost companion animals to share memories. Some sites
offer books and other materials to help with the grieving process. Other sites
offer advice that may be wise or worthless, depending on one’s proclivities and
personality. I like the idea that one should insist that pet grief is a
formidable form of the emotion, and that those who insist that one is grieving
over something unimportant should be resisted, ignored, shunned, and, well,
taken out into the country and tortured. (I’m just kidding.) There is certainly
an attempt to bring the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross ‘stages of grief’ into the pet
loss idea market. I have not experienced grief in stages, however. I
experienced it as an underground river that kept welling up to the surface of
consciousness. It has not proceeded step by step. It has lurked behind every
thought and action, but it is not declaring a method.
One site offered a book that tempted me, despite the fact
that it, too, went down the “grief stages” road. “How to ROAR: Pet Loss Grief
Recovery,” written by Robin Jean Brown, (copyright 2005, Spring Water
Publishing), tells the story of her profound grief at the death of her border
collie, Andy. She offers a way out: “journaling.” (ROAR, by the way, is an
acronym for Respect (your loss and grief), Own (your reality), Affirm
(yourself), and Reclaim (your life). I did not buy or completely read the book.
A preview of its text is offered online, and this text I skimmed. Since the
book is in workbook format, with space for one to write responses to the
various questions and suggested exercises, there is not really very much text
to read. The idea of writing it all down obviously has my wholehearted
support. After all, here we are! (We are nearly to the end, I promise.) I have
done without the questions, preferring to invent my own. Other writers seem to
have either journaled or offered a format for buyers of the product to journal
their pet loss experiences. No online preview is available for “Kingdom of the
Heart: A Pet Loss Journal” (Patty L. Luckenbach, Spiritual Living Press, 2005),
but reviewers online wrote of the help the book (or the method) offered.
