Pets Don't Have Funerals

I wrote this a few days ago, but held off on posting it. For one thing, it's not my most eloquent piece of writing, and I kept meaning to go back and edit it. But I kept putting it off, and finally realized that I didn't want to edit it. This was an exercise in pouring out my thoughts and feelings, and editing it would defeat the purpose.

Also, I worried that this would in some way make my mother feel...I don't know, guilty maybe? Well, Mom, you shouldn't. I understand that this is something that needs to be right for all of us, and you are the one who has been taking care of Kim while she's been ill, and none of us wants to do this if it's not time.

Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, I just don't want you to take it the wrong way.

I'm over-hyping it, so I'll just post it already, and stop rambling.

Pets don’t have funerals.

My cat, Kim, is dying.

I knew it would happen someday and even fancied myself ‘prepared’ when she began to go downhill, but I don’t think you’re ever prepared for death. I was beside myself when my mother told me she had made the appointment to put Kim to sleep. Kim, for all that she is a cat, is my oldest friend. I have known her for 19 years (most of my life!), and we’ve been through a lot together (High School, College, and a hurricane, to name a few).

Put that way, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by my reaction to the news that she was going to die, but I was. And the thing that distressed me the most? The fact that I couldn’t be there when it happened. I already bear the burden of guilt that I haven’t been able to take care of her for the last few years, and now I couldn’t even be there to say my last goodbyes?

So everything was postponed, the amount of fluids she was getting increased, allowing her to temporarily bounce back, and we are now in a state of limbo, waiting for her to take another turn for the worse.

And while I’ve been waiting, I have tried to explain to myself and to others why, exactly, it is so important to me to be there.

My conclusion? Pets don’t have funerals.

Why do people have funerals? They’re not for the dead, who are already gone from the world, and therefore no longer care about some ritualized goodbye ceremony. True, many funerals have a religious component with the idea that a final blessing might send the spirit on to its final destination. But if that is a funeral’s true purpose there would be no need for mourners, just the dead and a religious authority of some sort. So the truth must be that a funeral is not for the one who has died, but for those he or she left behind.

It is a chance for us to grieve, to let go, to remember how that person enriched our life and attempt to make sense of our new existence without them.

When my grandma, June Parker, was in a car accident, I went to PA to visit her in the hospital. I remember my mother saying that I probably wouldn’t be able to come for the funeral, so this way I could still see her and say my goodbyes. But when she died, I couldn’t not go to the funeral. I wasn’t OK with the goodbye I’d said, because part of me still had hope that she might wake up, that she might recover, no matter how slim that chance was, part of me hadn’t really let her go. I didn’t want to miss the funeral, the chance to mourn with other people who had known and loved her, the chance to hear people talk about her, stories from her life, things I’d never even known. I went to the funeral, and I let her go, and when I did, I freed myself. I became free to miss her and love her and keep her in my heart, with me always. If I hadn’t, I think I would still feel like I had unfinished business with her, that I’d failed her in some way by not loving her enough to mourn her properly.

But pets don’t have funerals.

The only real chance I’ll have to experience that kind of letting go is if I’m there when it happens. And that will be hard. But death is always hard.

Many people would be dismissive of my feelings for Kim. After all, she’s just a cat. Right? All I can say to those people is: You have never truly known the love of an animal. Just because they can’t talk, doesn’t make their emotional impact on your life any less. And Kim is an exceptional cat. When we lived in CO, and she was an outdoor cat, she used to follow us whenever we went on walks. We would decide to take a walk around the block, and halfway down the street we would turn around to find her following us. Once, we tried to down to our grandmother’s house. We got all the way out to the street behind our house and she was still following us, so we had to turn around for fear she would get lost or hit by a car. I think she must have abandonment issues, she wanted to be certain we could make it back home, because goodness knows us humans aren’t nearly as clever as cats, and we might get lost or hit by a car.

Anyway, that’s why I want to be there when it happens. To scratch her ears and tell her I love her, and that she’s been an important part of my life.

Because pets don’t have funerals.