The death of our dog has been really hard. Our family cries for Louie and says goodbye with books, Eulogy and headstone. One of my friends said the sweetest thing. They said that human beings are made in the “image” of God but animals are made in the “heart” of God. This phrase was so comforting that we used it when we eulogized Louie and had a family funeral. Each person in the family got a rock to place on the headstone in the Jewish tradition for the funeral. The rock symbolized our sadness being so great that even the rocks from the earth cry out to the heavens with our pain. As we placed the rocks on the grave, we all shared nice memories that we had about Louie. Even my younger kids participated between fits of playing. Afterwards, we read books for several weeks and talked about our feelings. Some of the best books that we read were, Dog Heaven. Alex liked how Dog Heaven said that the Angels bring your pets back to visit you from time to time. He likes to imagine Louie playing snow balls in heaven and having fun but coming back to see him from time to time. The other book that we read was called the Fall of Freddie the Leaf: A story of life for all ages by Leo Buscaglia. This book was not specifically about animals passing but goes through the process of life. It is a very tender book and I even got a lot out of it. The last book that we looked at was the Ten Good Things about Barnie. Although this was about a cat I liked the idea of the book. The last thing about Barnie is that he made the flowers grow. In that vain, we planted Daffodils and Azaleas on Louie’s grave. The Daffodils are just coming up and they look so beautiful. By burrying Louie with our own two hands and trying to touch our grief in all of these ways, we feel more connected to the earth and to life. Hopefully these lessons will help our children as they face loss through out their life time. Hopefully we have given them the seeds for growth that they will take with them. This process has been a journey. At the very least, we needed to say good-bye and honor our friend before we could welcome a new dog into our lives and learn to love again. Louie was a great dog and we will always love him. He was one of a kind.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Darkest before the Dawn
The death of our dog has been really hard. Our family cries for Louie and says goodbye with books, Eulogy and headstone. One of my friends said the sweetest thing. They said that human beings are made in the “image” of God but animals are made in the “heart” of God. This phrase was so comforting that we used it when we eulogized Louie and had a family funeral. Each person in the family got a rock to place on the headstone in the Jewish tradition for the funeral. The rock symbolized our sadness being so great that even the rocks from the earth cry out to the heavens with our pain. As we placed the rocks on the grave, we all shared nice memories that we had about Louie. Even my younger kids participated between fits of playing. Afterwards, we read books for several weeks and talked about our feelings. Some of the best books that we read were, Dog Heaven. Alex liked how Dog Heaven said that the Angels bring your pets back to visit you from time to time. He likes to imagine Louie playing snow balls in heaven and having fun but coming back to see him from time to time. The other book that we read was called the Fall of Freddie the Leaf: A story of life for all ages by Leo Buscaglia. This book was not specifically about animals passing but goes through the process of life. It is a very tender book and I even got a lot out of it. The last book that we looked at was the Ten Good Things about Barnie. Although this was about a cat I liked the idea of the book. The last thing about Barnie is that he made the flowers grow. In that vain, we planted Daffodils and Azaleas on Louie’s grave. The Daffodils are just coming up and they look so beautiful. By burrying Louie with our own two hands and trying to touch our grief in all of these ways, we feel more connected to the earth and to life. Hopefully these lessons will help our children as they face loss through out their life time. Hopefully we have given them the seeds for growth that they will take with them. This process has been a journey. At the very least, we needed to say good-bye and honor our friend before we could welcome a new dog into our lives and learn to love again. Louie was a great dog and we will always love him. He was one of a kind.
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Jena,
ReplyDeleteI'm truly sorry for your loss. Mary Ann, Nick and I lost Sunshine two weeks ago. She has been our sweet bunny rabbit for almost two years, and we lost her suddenly in a tragic accident. The sudden loss did not give us any time to prepare for her to be taken from us through old age. We have been mourning her for the past two weeks, and it has been very difficult. I have memorialized her in a book I created with Blurb. We read the Rainbow Bridge. And, we have talked to the local 4-H breeder who gave us Sunshine. We will be bringing home a new addition to the family in August. It is a long time to wait, but we will need the time to recover from our loss. I know how you and your family feel, and am glad that you have found someone new to add to your family.
Hope all is well, and talk soon
Brian