Traveling through Grief - April 11

by Nancy Piper

Grief hurts. Ignoring your grief, hiding your grief from yourself and others, just hoping it will go away doesn’t help. Grief is a process, a journey, not an event. You have to experience the emotion, go through the process, work through the pain even a little bit at a time, in order to come out the other side and be healed. If you actively work through your grief, you will eventually successfully navigate your grief journey. There is not a set time frame for this. You will eventually arrive at a new “normal” because life will never be the same.

Stages of Grief
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross first identified the stages of grief in her book On Death and Dying. John James and Russell Friedman of the Grief Recovery Institute believe there aren’t any stages. However, it is helpful to realize grievers pass through several emotions on their grief journey. These emotions may appear in a different order than listed. A person may also revisit the different emotions. It is helpful for you, as well as the people around you, to know what you are experiencing is normal. It helps us all to be understanding.

Shock and Disbelief
The first place you go to is usually shock and disbelief. When you are in shock, you are unable to concentrate or take in information. You are in emotional overload; you experience mental or physical numbness which is your mind’s way of protecting itself. It is not a time to make important decisions. If you are asked to make a decision and your mind isn’t prepared to do that, ask for time to make that decision.

Guilt and Regret
The second place you visit is usually anger, guilt and regret. You are frustrated and outraged because you have lost control of the situation. There is nothing you can do about what has happened. You are likely to lash out at people. Then you experience the “What ifs” and “If onlys.” “What if I had noticed sooner he didn’t feel good?” “If only I had taken him to the vet the night before.” We can come up with any number of “What ifs” and “If onlys.” The anger needs to be identified and released to allow yourself to let go and go on. Physical activities can help — punching a pillow, running, working out in the gym, cleaning house. These are short term energy relieving behaviors. Anger turned inward becomes guilt. The definition of guilt implies intent to harm. You had no intent to harm, so you should not feel guilty. Often, you are actually feeling regret instead of guilt. We always do what we feel is right, given the knowledge we have at the time. Please forgive yourself for not knowing more or for not doing something else. We always wish the result had been different. 

Denial
The third stop on the grief journey is commonly denial, and is normally brief. Denial is easily confused with shock and disbelief. You know the death has occurred but at the same time want it not to be true. Surely you will wake up from this bad dream. Surely your beloved pet will be there when you go home and open the front door. You desperately wish everything will be okay again. But your pet isn’t there. Your pet really is dead.

Depression
Another place on the grief journey is depression. Sometimes depression is along for the whole journey. This type of depression is commonly a lowered state of feeling or energy. You are very sad. You painfully remember the good times. Everything is overwhelming and you just need to detach. All you care about is the way you feel. This is actually a time of healing. Your mind is giving you a chance to heal. This gives you time to arrive at your new “normal”. For the first time it is possible to think you might survive the pain.

Resolution
The fifth place is resolution. This is a time of spiritual inner healing. You become stronger. You release the pain and keep the beloved memories close. You look for a lesson to be learned from your pet’s life with you. You become accustomed to carrying your grief around – it makes you stronger and more capable. There will always be a scar, even though the emotional wounds heal. The special love you had with your companion animal is always with you. 

Part of grief recovery is discovering what is unfinished for you in your relationships and completing it. To help yourself find out what is incomplete is to ask yourself “What do I wish had been different, better, or more?” One of the best recovery techniques during your grief journey is to write a letter to your pet, writing down how you feel about what happened, telling your pet all the things you wish you would have told him or things you wish you would have done. Pour out your heart in this letter. You should close it with something like “I love you. I miss you. Good-bye, Mom.” You could also close with “I have to go now, and I have to let go of the pain. Good-bye, Dad.” Then read your letter out loud to your pet. There will be strong emotion, both in the writing and in the reading, but that is okay. Have a box of tissues at hand.
Another similar technique is to write the story of your life together; tell your pet’s story. Write how your pet came into your life; write both of the good and no-so-good times; write about the favorite things you did together, your favorite memories as well as your not-so-favorite memories. It is almost impossible to complete your grief journey without looking at everything about the relationship, both good and bad. One of life’s ironies is that you have to feel the pain in order to heal the pain.
Tell Your Story

Find a person or people who will listen to your story. You need to tell and retell your story in order to make sense of it and to reconcile with your loss. A non-judgmental friend is good for this. If you don’t have anyone you can trust with your feelings, find a pet grief recovery group. There are also on-line email groups or chat rooms where you can tell your story and share with other people who can relate to your loss. You will know you are not alone in the way you feel.
“Our grief lives with us as long as we live. Grief changes. It has rhythms. Sometimes it is present in its absence and sometimes it is absence that makes our grief present. Sometimes we are strong and fearless in the face of our grief and sometimes we are frightened and vulnerable. It is all part of the tapestry of our lives and by the very act of weaving our losses into that tapestry we ensure that our losses are part of our wholeness. And so we heal.” (Deborah Morris Coryell, Healing Through the Shadow of Loss)

Nancy Bush Piper has owned Rolling Acres Memorial Gardens for Pets, a pet cemetery, crematorium, and funeral home in Kansas City for over 32 years. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and sociology. Piper continued her education in the cemetery industry, attending the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association University for two years, where she also taught a course one year. She was certified as a Grief Recovery Specialist in 1999 by the Grief Recovery Institute. Piper worked in the human cemetery and funeral industry before, and after she became involved with the after-life care of pets. Nancy and her husband, Gary, are blessed with many animals. For fun, she studies horsemanship and plays with her horses and mules.