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Why you should ask your loved ones to let your pet see your dead body after you die

Something nobody wants to think about, but definitely should.

Photo by Diana ✨/Pexels

Pets don't understand when their human just doesn't come home one day.

Few of us want to think about our pets dying, but I imagine even fewer of us want to think about how our pets would handle us dying.

Many pets form bonds with their humans, some to an extreme degree. When an animal's human dies, it's a major life event, but it's not like someone can logically explain why their person just isn't around anymore. From the animal's perspective, their person just disappeared.

A quote that's sometimes been attributed to David Attenborough (though its actual origin is unclear) offers an intriguing idea that might help a pet deal with an owner's death:

"If I die while I have a pet, let my animal see my dead body, please. They understand death and seeing me dead will allow them to mourn, but if I just never show up one day they’ll think I abandoned them. I know what it feels like to be abandoned and I never want anyone to feel that way, especially my dog."

Many people who have witnessed a pet losing their human have noted their grieving behaviors. President George H.W. Bush's service dog, Sully, famously spent the night lying by his casket two days after he died. A Canadian police officer's service dog, Danny, whimpered next to his owner's casket throughout his funeral, according to the American Kennel Club. There are countless stories of people's pets exhibiting mourning-type behaviors after a human passes away that make it clear that they are affected by their human's death.

But is it true that seeing the body can help them process it better?

a woman sitting in a courtroom with a dog on her lap Photo by The Good Funeral Guide on Unsplash

VCA Animal Hospitals says that exposing the pet to a companion's dead body might help provide closure: "Pets have a limited understanding of death as finality. Some behaviorists think that a dog’s grief response may be reduced by having an opportunity to investigate the deceased. It could be helpful to let your pet see the body of his deceased friend. He may not totally grasp the situation, but one last visit may help him understand that his pal is gone."

Greenlin Pet Resorts also includes in a list of helping pets through the loss of their owners, "Let them see the body of their deceased owner: This may not be practical in all situations, subt by allowing a mourning pet to see the body of their deceased companion you are providing the only real kind of communicable closure a human can give a pet in this situation."

People on Reddit have shared their own personal anecdotes of animals seeming to process the death of an owner or a fellow pet companion better after being near their body.

"We did this with my grandpa when he died. His dog knew but also went into a deep depression. He would just lay down and cry. He didn’t want to eat but then they remembered my grandpa would give him some McDonald’s cheeseburger as a treat. They went and got him one and he ate some! It took a few months of him being depressed but he would still sleep in my grandpas room and bed until he finally started to feel less sad."

"I can confirm this. My mom died at my home and I asked the nurse if I could get my dog so he could see and sniff her. He came in, gave her a momentary sniff and then went to his normal 'gotta say hi to the nurse.' Until that day if I said 'grammy' he’d go looking for her, now he doesn’t react at all when I say it. He definitely knows."

a dog sitting on a chair in front of a woman Photo by DEAD GOOD LEGACIES on Unsplash

"Years ago a friend’s dad died at work. His dog spent the next couple of days pacing & looking for him, so they took him to the funeral home. Once he sniffed the body he understood & stopped searching for him."

"Same with pets in a multi-pet family. When one of our two cats was put down due to age we showed the body to the other. She had a slightly shocked reaction so I think she understood he had died."

"100% agree with this. My family had two little dogs, boy and girl. The boy passed in a boating accident and was not found for a few weeks, every single night the girl dog would howl and cry for the boy dog. When the body of the boy dog was finally found, we brought him home to be buried and she got to see his body, from then on she never cried but she is routinely found sitting under the tree next to his grave. She totally knows that he is there, it’s heartbreaking."

Of course, we can't know what actually goes on in the minds of our pets, so we rely instead on observing their behaviors. We do know that animals often behave differently when owners die, and if seeing and smelling the deceased might help them process the loss, it certainly doesn't hurt to give it a try.

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Wellness

Zoom memorials highlight the ironic cruelty of trying to mourn together during the pandemic

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Earlier this month, I attended my first Zoom wedding. A week after that, I attended a Zoom baby shower.

Tomorrow, I'll attend a Zoom gathering to mourn the loss of a family friend. His name was Peter. He died of COVID-19 last week.

This gathering isn't technically a funeral or memorial service, but rather a virtual devotional taking place on Zoom at the same time as Peter's physical burial. A few close friends and family will gather at the gravesite—masked and distanced—while the rest of us share readings and prayers over Zoom to honor his interment.

It's weird. There's no other way to say it. With the wedding and baby shower, we all sort of laughed our way through the weirdness. We acknowledged the bummer of not being able to get together, but at this point we're all accustomed to having to meet virtually. Zoom celebrations are better than no celebrations at all.

But mourning this way feels...different. We can't laugh away the awkwardness of it when the Zoom meeting itself is a reminder of the tragic cause of our friend's death.

Celebratory gatherings are fun, but not necessary. Gathering when someone dies feels necessary in a way, and the inability to do that adds an extra layer of loss to the grief we're already experiencing. Normally, our whole community would gather together to honor Peter's life tomorrow. We'd put on appropriate funeral attire, stand side by side at his grave, hold hands or hug one another as we mark the momentousness of his passing. We'd all bring food and break bread together as we share stories of his life. We'd pass around tissues, crying and laughing and sharing in the oh-so-human experience of bringing together the lives he had touched.

But we can't do any of that. If we did, we'd run the risk of having to do it all over again for another friend or loved one taken too soon by this stupid virus. So we do what we can do and deal with the strange questions—What does one wear to a Zoom mourning? How long it will be before we can actually gather for a real memorial service? Will it feel like it's too late then? Will we want to do that in the midst of celebrating a return to non-distanced life?

This pandemic has taken so much, and each thing stings in its own way. The death toll itself is overwhelming, especially here in the U.S. where we have already lost more than 330,000 lives. A hundred 9/11s and counting. Five Vietnams in less than a year. It's unreal. In the beginning, we were told that all of us would likely end up knowing someone who died of COVID-19, and some people have now lost multiple family members. More will follow as we head into the deadliest month of the pandemic. That's not doom and gloom forecasting—that's the reality of the current moment.

But the loss of in-person mourning as millions are losing loved ones before they expected to is a tragedy in and of itself. There's a cruel irony in it, that we can't gather in person to mourn if we want to stop the thing that's making it so we can't gather in person to mourn. When we need the comfort of coming together the most, we can't, as indulging in that comfort could lead to even more suffering. Of all of the sacrifices we've had to make, the loss of communal mourning is one of the hardest.

And so we open our computers and enter our virtual meeting rooms and try to comfort one another through our grief amid the inevitable unmute reminders. It's weird. It all feels wrong. But it's necessary. We need to mourn our losses together. We also need to be able to mourn the fact that we're not able to do that the way we want to.

There is gratitude to be found in all of this, of course. It's pretty incredible that we live in a time when we have the technology to at least see one another's faces and hear people's voices as we share our losses at a distance. If this pandemic had hit in my childhood, we'd have had no community ability to mourn at all. A Zoom gathering to mourn is better than no gathering at all—but it's still all of the weird, wrong, sad things at once.

And what's extra painful about it is that it didn't have to be this way. Next time we have a pandemic, let's all agree to just follow New Zealand's lead, shall we? Hundreds of thousands of Zoom funerals really ought to be enough to get us all on the same page.

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Heroes

From quilts to embroidery: Creative ways artists memorialize those who've passed away.

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Prudential

Everyone who's lost a loved one has memories and stories of them that they will always treasure.

Talking about those memories and sharing them with others can help people cope with grief and also to celebrate the legacy of their loved one. Something else that's a good healing tool? Art.

Artist Bisa Butler uses quilting to memorialize those who've died.  

"I’ve suffered loss and I know that longing for that person," she said.

For the past 15 years, Butler has turned loss into warmth and comfort through commemorative quilts. She bases her quilts on photographs of loved ones — including her own grandmother as she neared the end of life. Butler works to find ways to pour extra meaning into her quilts; for her grandmother's quilt, for example, she incorporated violets into the pattern because that was also her grandmother's name.

When Butler was tasked with making a quilt to honor the late Howard Fitch, she used parts of a military shirt to commemorate his service and commitment to his country.

"Abundant Blessings" image via Bisa Butler, used with permission.

Butler made the quilt for Dawn Fitch, Howard's daughter, as part of Prudential's "Masterpiece of Love"campaign. The series honors life, love, loss, and the power of the human spirit by bringing together four artists with four survivors of loss to create works that celebrate their loved ones.

Butler's quilt of Fitch was intended not only to celebrate him, but to provide comfort and protection to his family.

"For me, the very nature of looking at fabric stitched is a comfort," she said. "For people to have that tangible piece, it's not only something nice to look at, it's something nice to touch."

Artist Christine DaCruz discovered a different way of interpreting death — through an embroidery project.

During an artist residency that focused on how news is interpreted, DaCruz got an idea to embroider obituaries from The New York Times.

"The shift became to not necessarily talk about their death but to reflect on their life," she said. "I thought the New York Times' obituaries did such a good job at collecting the stories of how these people lived and what was important to them."

Image from "The Obituaries" via Christine DaCruz, used with permission.

In "The Obituaries," a series that can be found on her website, DaCruz takes photographs used in obituaries and hand-stitches colored thread through the paper to embellish the photos. What makes them extra interesting is how she draws outside of the cropped photo images to include what she imagines the rest of the photo to look like.

Image from "The Obituaries" via Christine DaCruz, used with permission.

It's just one way she likes to celebrate life and learn people's histories — even if they may be strangers.

"We are all affected by [death]," DaCruz noted, "but just reflecting on the person's life and all the good they brought into the world and how they affected people positively is a way to embrace and celebrate them."

When DaCruz was asked to memorialize the life of Mickey McNany, she knew just the route to take.

Mickey, the late mother of Ryan McNany, is another of the loved ones featured in Prudential's "Masterpiece of Love" series.

McNany was the founding director of the Theatre School at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Even after losing her fight with late-stage cancer, she continues to touch countless lives; 87% of the kids McNany mentored throughout the years have ended up in a career in theater arts.

"She was a force to be reckoned with," said DaCruz, after learning McNany's story.

Mickey McNany. Image via Prudential, used with permission.

McNany helped so many people realize their dreams, DaCruz thought, so why not give her her own playbill cover?

DaCruz used inspiration for the piece "Show Biz Kid" from a photo of McNany doing what she loved: teaching.

"Showbiz Kid" by Christine DaCruz. Image via Prudential, used with permission.

"She motivated all these kids to get out on stage and break out of their isolated boxes," DaCruz recalled. "She helped them come out of her comfort zone."

Art — whether it’s writing, painting, dancing, observing, or something else — can be a productive outlet to promote healing and expression.

There's a reason art therapy is becoming an increasingly popular method of care. Art, prayer, and healing can help to bring one's thoughts inward, and that journey can be deeply transformative.

"People really connect with art," DaCruz said. "Even if they don’t visit museums on a regular basis, everybody is drawn to something beautiful, especially if it’s about something they recognize."

"What’s more recognizable than somebody they love?"

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How performing little acts of kindness is helping grieving parents move forward.

Joanne Cacciatore's daughter, Cheyenne, was stillborn in July 1994. She says it was the worst day of her life.

Photo via Joanne Cacciatore, used with permission.

She briefly held her baby girl in her arms, but that was all the time she'd get with her.

It was then that Cacciatore decided to dedicate her life to helping parents like herself deal with grief.

But first, she had her own grief to contend with. She says in the months that followed, she couldn't stop crying and found parenting her other three children to be an impossible task.

That Christmas, which would've been Cheyenne's first, Cacciatore took the money she would have spent on presents and did something a little different with it. She bought a bunch of toys for underprivileged kids through a local charity.

"And in that moment [Cheyenne] was very much alive, because my love for her continued, and I was able to enact that love in the world," she told Yahoo! News.

That's when she first became aware of the immense healing power of giving. From there, she started The Kindness Project.

The Kindness Project asks grieving parents to do good deeds in their communities in memory of a lost child (or parent, friend, or spouse).

They then leave behind a small note card so the recipient can channel their gratitude toward the deceased and know that person's life and death continues to matter.

All photos provided by The Kindness Project.

Cacciatore says so far, over 2,000,000 acts of kindness have occurred because of the project around the world.

There's Kamaria McDonald, who donated toys, baby supplies, and more to a domestic violence shelter in honor of her late-son, Dane.

There's young Mackenzie's mother, who paid for and left two giant stuffed animals for some unsuspecting kids at a Kohl's in memory of her daughter.

A first-grade class in Richmond, California, wrote kind notes to their neighbors in honor of Teddy, a young boy who died of cancer.

Michael's mom donated basketballs to her local community center in honor of her son, who loved to shoot hoops.

And then there's Ann, whose story has stuck with Cacciatore for many years.

Ann tragically lost her baby, Joshua, to sudden infant death syndrome. One day, at one of her favorite restaurants, Ann stumbled across a young pregnant woman enjoying a baby shower. In her grief, it was almost too much to bear.

Ann headed for the door, feeling confused, overwhelmed, and inexplicably angry at this complete stranger. But "she paused, took a deep breath, took out a Kindness Project card, wrote Joshua's name on it, pre-paid the bill of the shower party in full, and called me weeping," Cacciatore wrote in the book Techniques of Grief Therapy.

It was a painful thing for Ann to do but an important step in her healing process.

The Kindness Project's Facebook page is flooded with incredible stories of giving — from cups of coffee to massive donations.

As beautiful as it is for a stranger to experience an unexpected act of kindness, the project is really about parents finding constructive ways to heal.

"While these good deeds do not eradicate grief, nor should they do so," Cacciatore wrote, "They do provide a means through which the mourner can redirect painful emotions into feelings of love and compassion and hope."

Losing a child is one of the most difficult things a person can go through. Cacciatore just hopes that all of that pain and suffering won't be totally in vain, and we remember that every life deserves to be remembered, no matter how short it might be.

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