The Right Way to Say Goodbye

The was held for a human friend of mine. He had been killed in a car accident two months previously, and various investigations/complications had delayed the burial.

- By Iris Zinck

As friends and family awaited the funeral, I recalled anew how important such events are to those of us left behind. Yes, they celebrate the lost life, but in bringing together those who mourn the person, they allow us to grieve together in a way that helps us heal. The closure they provide enables us to move forward with our lives. Additionally, the placement of some sort of headstone or marker provides a sense of finality as well as a beautiful way to make a statement that someone special was on this earth, for a time that is always too short.

If we can shape some sort of equivalent experience in honor of one of our beloved cats, it seems likely it could provide equivalent benefits: comfort, closure, and where appropriate, a coming together of people whose lives were touched by the cat. Yet, very few of us are able to create such an opportunity to celebrate our Rainbow Bridge babies. We feel it is making too big a fuss, we may not have the time, our friends are too busy to be there, or we simply don't know how to proceed.

Dr. Rebecca Schoenberg, a hospice-focused vet based in Medford, Massachusetts, speaks eloquently to the value of devising your own special way to say goodbye to a pet: "As a culture, we have traditions for how to grieve the loss of people we love, but we have no such cultural framework for grieving the loss of a beloved pet. Even as we realize more and more how important they are in our lives, and the significance of the relationships we have with them, there's no map for how to navigate such a loss.