Rainbow Blue

Organic Grieving

I miss the little wagging tail; I miss the plaintive, pleading wail; I miss the wistful, loving glance; I miss the circling welcome-dance. — Henry Willett, "In Memoriam"

A light has left your world — the light of innocence, of friend-ship, of a love that did not restrict or bind. Consequently, the loss of your animal friend may mean that the intensity of sadness you feel is greater than any you have ever known. This is why it is so important to allow yourself to grieve and heal in your own way and time.

ORGANIC GRIEVING

You are an individual. The animal who shared your life was an individual. Death or loss of an animal is a one-time experience.

Grieving is an ongoing passage toward healing and reconciliation. In Kindred Spirits, Dr. Allen Schoen writes, "Grief has no timetable. It is a journey filled with peaks and valleys. Just when you think you are getting over your loss, a fresh wave of pain pulls you back. But grieving is part of the human experience; it is a journey to a new stage of life".

Because you are unique, we suggest that you engage in what we call organic grieving. With organic grieving there is only one rule or guideline for mourning: use whatever naturally alleviates your stress and pain without harming yourself or anyone else or breaking any laws.

Organic grieving enables you to find the most effective and natural ways to restore yourself and rebuild your life after the loss of a beloved animal companion. This means giving yourself permission to mourn loss in ways that originate from your essence, your spirit, your unique self. Organic grieving emanates from the core of your being, where the essence of what you honestly feel and believe about life and death resides. There are no "shoulds or ""have-tos" with organic grieving. You simply do not allow anyone to take away your right to grieve in ways that fit most naturally with your physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual makeup.

Your methods and the amount of time it takes for you to grieve and to heal may look strange to someone who isn't inside your skin or who hasn't loved as you have loved. So be it. You don't have to justify your thoughts and feelings over the loss of a pet. We wholeheartedly agree with what the pet bereavement counselor and author Jamie Quackenbush says in When Your Pet Dies. He writes, "Experience your emotions, don't fight them or judge them, and ignore people who try to do that for you. No matter who you are, your bereavement over a pet's death is necessary, a natural process that will help you in the long run".

RAINBOW BLUE

Blue represents the color of your sadness and grief. Rainbows linger after storms, their colors brightening a once gloomy sky. Short waves of white light create the inner edge of a rainbow by penetrating raindrops and reemerging as the color blue. Yet to see the rainbow's brilliant colors, we must be standing with our backs to the sun.

Like the rainbow's shortest waves, animal companions are white lights who are with us only for a comparatively brief amount of time. While on earth, they have reflected back our best and wisest selves. Now a beloved pet's death has blotted out the sun and revealed the blue of sadness with alarming clarity. Blue becomes the first color of the rainbow that we see. Organic grieving will help you experience the blue of sorrow in a natural way.

PHASES OF ORGANIC GRIEVING

Many excellent books and research studies have shown that human beings tend to experience a set of emotions and follow a pattern of behaviors that can be grouped into what are known as the stages of grief. It's good to know about these stages and their characteristics, so if you go into a rage around your house and kick wastebaskets against the wall after your pet dies, you'll know that you aren't going crazy. Anger is one of the stages of grief — a normal reaction to loss.

By not imposing any preconceived ideas about what you should be feeling at a given time after a loss, organic grieving gives you leeway to experience whatever you want at the point when it naturally occurs. The thoughts and feelings of a particular phase can last for a minute or a month. Various aspects of grief may pop up like jack-in-the-boxes when you least expect them. For example, it's normal to feel shock, numbness, and denial as an initial reaction to the death of a loved one. It's also normal not to feel any of those things until much later, or to experience them repeatedly in varying waves of intensity.

Organic grieving follows your natural rhythms for handling pain and loss. When you're upset, do you usually cry? Lash out at others? Do you grow quiet and withdrawn? Is your first reaction to turn to God or pray for strength? Grieving organically will enable you to let your natural impulses run their course rather than trying to box yourself into an "acceptable" stage of grief for a "reasonable" period of time. An understanding of organic grieving will also help you to deal with possible incongruent grieving among your family members — that is, the possibility that you won't all grieve in exactly the same way. Although you and your spouse, for example, may both be hurting mightily over the loss of your family pet, you could be grieving organically in entirely different ways. That can make you feel out of sync with or judgmental about each other, even though both of you have been deeply affected by the loss.

In the next few sections, we list some of the most prevalent stages of grieving that experts on the subject have agreed are common, with a few examples of how each stage might manifest itself after the loss of an animal companion. But again, remember, however you normally react to loss is your own organic way of grieving.

Shock, Doubt, and Denial

This is the "I can't believe my friend is gone" phase of grieving. It's nature's way of boarding over the windows to keep the high winds of grief and loss from shattering the glass and blowing through the house. But those boards of denial also keep you temporarily from seeing the reality of the storm. Shock, doubt, and denial can take the form of prolonging the suffering of an animal when you can't allow yourself to believe that it's time to let go. After the loss, this aspect of grieving can leave you walking around in a daze, unable to accept that your pet is gone. Customary habits, such as...