When there’s no time to prepare for the loss of your pet
My last blog was talking of the things we can share and do with our precious pets when we know the end is in sight.
I’ve always felt that if we know, if we have time to prepare, then it’s a privilege beyond privileges that we get to do and say all the things to try and help make that goodbye just a little more comfortable.
My first Dalmatian Fleur was my very first dog. I remember dreading the day that would be our last, I longed and hoped that when the time came I would be by her side. I wanted her to live forever of course, but knew life didn’t quite work that way. I was so focused on getting her through life safely and took my very first ‘ownership of a dog’ to the max and committed to her from day one that she would have everything she needed. The bond was so strong, the love so real - how do you let that go when the time comes to say goodbye?
Well I have learnt that you don’t, the love continues, it’s just so hard to know where to put that love when you can’t see them by your side.
Grief really is love with nowhere to go.
So did I have time to do the bucket list? Did I have the privilege of knowing when the end was coming? Looking back I guess I did as I was privileged to have her into her late years. But our last few weeks and days together were simply normal. She chose if she wanted to come on a walk, we snuggled as always on the sofa, and when she took a turn for the worse and the impossible decision had to be made it was all so quick. No last minute beach walk, no last minute favorite food and the only thing I could tick off of the bucket list was a final hug and the knowledge that she knew love.
I’ve had the pleasure of loving and the heartache of losing many dogs, Fleur, Dotty, Daisy, Fenn, Talula and Delila. I’ve been lucky to know when the end is in sight and I’ve been unlucky in not knowing and feeling completely unprepared for our final day.
So how do we cope? How do we move on when we feel cheated, when we feel that we didn’t get our time, when we needed more time to prepare, when we wish we’d been home that day or when we wished we’d done things differently? How do we cope with those demanding and haunting questions in our heads, the ‘what if’s’, the maybes, the guilt, the moments of ‘I’d do anything to have you back’. Just one more day together so we can get that ending just right and for it to be perfect..
Sadly we can’t, we can’t change the past. We have no power to do so. Losing our precious pets is a cross we have to bear, it’s the downside of love, it’s the realisation they don’t live forever, the facts are it doesn’t always end as we want it to or as we had planned, that sadly is life. Life is like being at sea, the calm and the storms, the crashing of the waves and the beautiful still water, the deep unknown. If only we had that crystal ball.
What we do know is sometimes we have to make an impossible choice at an impossible time. And yet sometimes we do not even get that choice of that impossible decision. Pets will sometimes decide for themselves when it is right for them. Sometimes our precious pets can be taken away from us in the most upsetting and awful set of circumstances. Life can be cruel, life can feel like it’s ripping your heart out.
How do we move on? How do we cope? Well, as we know the grief never leaves us, it’s like walking alongside a river, a river of grief that is calm, a river of grief that is sometimes rapid. The sea waters that change colours, the crashing of the waves and the quiet of the calm ripple in still waters. That's the grief and that’s the love, we walk with it, we sit with it, we sleep with it, we have to live with it.
Any decisions made were made with the information you had at the time and no matter what the end looked like, you loved your pet, you welcomed them into your life and your home, and you loved them until the end.
The bucket list has been from the day you both met. It’s all the things you did together in all the time you had, not just the ending. The entire life you shared, that’s your bucket list and wow, what a bucket list it was.
Natasha,
Slightly human, mostly dog.
Speak again soon,
Fleur Fauna Pet Crematorium
🐾 Individual Pet Cremation serving Llandeilo, Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, Ceridigion, Powys, South Wales, West Wales and beyond.
☎️ 01558 534553
🌐www.fleurfaunapetcrematorium.co.uk
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