Illustration by Michelle Simpson
“In dominant Western culture, we’re not taught how to meet death. We’re just told not to die,” says Sarah Kerr. “But when dying is where you’re going, how do you actually do that well?”
Working as a death doula in Victoria, BC, Kerr has spent much time thinking about dying and grieving, along with the rituals surrounding these acts. She founded the Centre for Sacred Deathcare to help individuals face death—whether their own, another person’s, or a beloved animal’s—with “more grace and more confidence.” She offers support and guidance at every step of the journey, “leading up to the last breath, at the last breath, after the last breath.” From the outside, Kerr’s job might seem morbid or depressing, but she insists the opposite is true. “It is enlivening and invigorating and inspiring, because I get to see and be in these spaces of incredible love.”
If your precious pet has reached their own end-of-life journey, a death doula or pet-loss companion can help you in several ways.
Discussing Death
When your dog or cat is dying, it’s often difficult to find a friend or family member who can discuss the situation without becoming uncomfortable or interrupting with conversation-ending platitudes. A death doula listens, commiserates, and offers practical advice based on their experience.
“Western society has this very big taboo, this aversion to death, even though it is a companion to life. You can’t have life without death,” says Kristina Bohler Golden, an end-of-life doula in St. Louis, MO, who cofounded the death-positive festival Last Call and teaches in the International Doula Life Movement’s Certified Pet Doula Program. “Everyone will experience it. Everyone will go through it. So it’s not something that we should shy away from or be afraid of.”
But many people feel so awkward even mentioning death that they stay silent and let a grieving person suffer alone. Golden says, “Any time somebody suffers from grief, it’s incredibly isolating. But when you suffer from the loss of a pet, it’s even more so because you feel like you can’t talk to anybody about it, because they’re going to try to make you feel better by saying, ‘Well, it wasn’t your grandma.’” Part of Golden’s role is simply to listen. “I’m there if you just want to talk to somebody and feel validated,” she says. “You’re suffering from a loss that maybe other people in your life don’t understand.”
“I’m there if you just want to talk to somebody and feel validated,” she says. “You’re suffering from a loss that maybe other people in your life don’t understand.”
Is It Time?
A death doula can serve as a sounding board and support system for anyone facing the most gut-wrenching decisions a pet owner ever has to make: if euthanasia is the most humane option left, when to schedule it for, and whether to do it in a veterinary office or at home. Walker considers it part of her job to help a pet owner recognize when it’s time. After all, as she points out, pets “can’t verbally tell us that they would like to die—which, quite frankly, happens with a lot of my human clients.”
Having a knowledgeable and compassionate third party involved in the whole process offers solace to the pet owner, Walker says. “If the practical aspects are taken care of, that seems to alleviate some of the emotional burden, because then they can be there emotionally and connect with their pet versus dealing with, ‘Am I doing the right thing? Should we wait? Should I call somebody else?’”
Coleen Ellis, who is based in Dallas, TX, founded the first pet funeral home in the United States over two decades ago and now runs Two Hearts Pet Loss Center, which she also founded. “Even though the definition of euthanasia is ‘good or fortunate death,’ it doesn’t feel like that,” she says, and she mentions the heavy burden of having to make that decision. A death doula can ease some of that burden.
The bucket list might include activities such as visits to a specific park—even if the dog has to be pulled in a wagon—or trips to the fast-food drive-through for your pet’s favourite indulgence.
Planning a Good End
The idea of an end-of-life bucket list for a dying human is nothing new, but few people think to apply the same concept to animals. Whenever Ellis is called in to help a pet owner “walk in that anticipatory grief journey,” she often suggests compiling a bucket list specific to the animal. “I want us to put ourselves out six months from now, and I want us to look back on this time, and I want us to ask ourselves this question: ‘What can I do right now so that I don’t have a coulda, shoulda, woulda when it’s over?’” she says. “When that day comes, I want us to be able to truly say the end was perfect.” The bucket list might include activities such as visits to a specific park—even if the dog has to be pulled in a wagon—or trips to the fast-food drive-through for your pet’s favourite indulgence.
Ellis talks about one pet owner who heeded her advice. The woman painted a large portrait of her beloved pooch, then she and her ailing dog spent three days completing every item on the bucket list. On the day of the scheduled euthanasia, she used sidewalk chalk to draw a rainbow on her driveway. Friends and family walked over the rainbow before coming into the house to say their goodbyes. The dog was then put to sleep on the rainbow while surrounded by loved ones. For the next few days, the woman kept the dog’s body lying under the portrait, so more people could pay their respects. She sobbed as she later told Ellis, “The end was perfect. There’s not one regret. There’s not one thing I didn’t do.” This dog’s end-of-life experience, Ellis says, was “a crescendo to a life well lived, a life loved, a life shared.”
Then there was the client whose cat adored snuggling in the sock drawer. “I said then what I might recommend is when we put him to peace, he is put to peace in the sock drawer, where he’s surrounded by his heaven on earth,” Ellis recalls. “And that’s what they did.”
Permission to Grieve
“What if people think I’m weird?” is a question Ellis often hears. “Then tell them to leave your house,” she always responds. “Do what you need to do to honour your baby.” A big part of her work involves normalizing the grieving process for her clients. “All day long I tell people, ‘I want to give you permission to feel the way you want to feel. I want to give you permission to do whatever ritual it is you want to do.’” If a client feels like sobbing, Ellis encourages them to do so: “We’re gonna sit right here and snot-bubble cry.” If a client wants to express rage, Ellis encourages that, too: “You can scream and holler and punch that wall and be mad at me and be mad at God.”
She acknowledges just how meaningful a relationship with a pet can be. “It’s this little creature whose only job is to love you. That’s their only job. They’re not going to graduate. They’re not going to cure cancer. They’re not going to do anything but love you. And that’s powerful. That is so stinking powerful.”
Well-meaning friends and family members often encourage a bereaved pet parent to just “get over” the death quickly and stop grieving by adopting another dog or cat. Joe Dwyer, a New Jersey pet-loss companion and ordained animal chaplain, says this is “not done in a mean-spirited way, but it doesn’t help the person who’s grieving.” He notes that in modern Western culture, it’s difficult for most people to admit that the loss of a pet can be “as traumatic a loss as losing a parent or a sibling.” Dwyer gives himself permission to feel grief right alongside the individual he’s helping: “If you’re not drained when you’re performing a service or you’re sitting with someone who went through the traumatic loss of a beloved family pet member, then you’re not doing it right.”
Rituals
Pet owners sometimes worry that it’s inappropriate to hold a funeral or memorial service for an animal, or they fear that the ceremony will feel dry and impersonal. But Dwyer—who is a deeply religious person himself—assures clients there’s no need to get hung up on the sometimes rigid-seeming dictates of organized religion. “We can do whatever you would like,” he says. “If you’re Christian, that doesn’t mean you have to use scripture. You can use a poem. If you’re Jewish and you’d like to use a New Testament scripture, you can do that. This is not a cookie-cutter operation.” He advises, “Open your mind and heart to what is going to give you the most peace.”
“I can only hope my funeral is this beautiful when I die.”
One memorial service that Coleen Ellis helped to organize was for a tabby cat named Vincent. After the service ended, one of the attendees sheepishly admitted, “I only came to this because I wanted to see what a funeral for a cat would look like.” When Ellis asked what he thought of the service for Vincent, he responded, “I can only hope my funeral is this beautiful when I die.”
Kristina Bohler Golden describes helping grieving clients by organizing craft nights where they make collages and scrapbooks of pet photos and figure out creative ways to repurpose old pet toys. “It can be very cathartic to do those things together and then to talk about it.” She also shares with clients information about companies that offer services such as doing paw prints or making stuffed animals that look like the deceased pet and have some of the animal’s ashes tucked inside.
When it comes to end-of-life rituals, it’s helpful to “create a sacred space for what you want to do,” which might include photos, flowers, a blanket and a basket, says Madeline Christie, the founder of Daisy Deathcare in Courtenay, BC. She advises keeping the pet’s body for a few hours or even overnight before doing a burial or going to a crematorium, to give the grieving person a chance to adapt to the bleak new pet-less reality. “They were just here and warm and breathing, then they’re not here anymore,” she says. “It’s just a healthier way of saying goodbye, I think.” Throughout the rituals, a death doula like Christie can offer support “emotionally and logistically and spiritually.”
The Practical Details
Anyone facing the loss of a pet can easily become overwhelmed by the practical details and choices involved in the gut-wrenching experience: home euthanasia or euthanasia in a vet’s office, cremation or aquamation (alkaline hydrolysis, also known as water cremation), home burial or burial in a pet cemetery, memorial or funeral. A death doula has the knowledge, experience, and emotional distance to be able to help. The clients of Kristina Bohler Golden often express relief after receiving guidance and direction, saying things like: “I’m not lost. I’m not adrift. I don’t have to just start Googling random things on the internet.”
Even death doulas find it useful to enlist the services of other death doulas. “I have used pet-death doulas, and it makes a world of difference,” Tracey Walker says. “For me, it gave me the presence that I needed to be there with my little girl, my soul cat.” Walker describes how having someone provide support and handle details frees up a grieving person to be able to spend quality time with a loved one toward the end. The help offered could be as mundane as filling in paperwork or driving to the store for a prescription, or as significant as holding a client’s hand while the vet does that final injection. And the pet-death doula’s job always involves much listening and compassion.
“You can’t do it for yourself,” Sarah Kerr says. Her gratitude to the death doula—a former student—who helped her in her own time of need is immense. “She was important in holding space and keeping the bigger picture in mind. When you’re grieving, you’re just in the soup of right now,” Kerr says. “When you’re in that moment, you’ve come undone.” And coming undone is exactly what needs to happen in order to grieve properly. “Because that’s what death is supposed to do is undo you, so it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong if you’re sad—it means you’re doing it right.”
Finding a Pet-Death Doula
There are vast differences in how individuals approach the profession, Kerr says. “I have a spiritual, ritual, soul-based approach, which can be completely different than another death doula who was taught by someone who’s a retired hospice nurse and is all about bedside care.” The key is to find someone who resonates with you during this deeply emotional time. “There can be beauty, and there can be love, and there can be laughter and inspiration and revitalization, even though there is death and loss and broken-heartedness and bereavement.”
For lists of practitioners organized by region, visit the websites of associations such as the International Doula Life Movement and the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance. Many death doulas are experienced in helping with the end of life for both humans and pets.