Pets and Grief (Ham Solo Memorial Post)

 The hardest part of getting a pet is knowing that its lifespan is shorter than yours, and one day it will die. Knowing that the longest you'll have with a beloved pet is probably around 15 years can be hard to settle in your mind.  In this week's readings, we saw two different ways of dealing with animal death: excessive grief and satire.

The mid-19th century was the general Emo phase of Europe. People like Mary Shelley, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Caspar David Friedrich, and John Keats decided to make every situation into like, an 11 on the intense emotions scale. Lord Byron was the absolute king of Romanticism. How much of a drama queen do you have to be that "Byronic" means "a tragically flawed hero"? He was so dramatic that he asked for his friend Percy Shelley's skull when he died. Shelley declined, because Byron was currently using the skulls of medieval monks as drinking glasses. 

Byron's favorite pet, Boatswain

Anyways, Byron loved animals. He was so mad that Cambridge wouldn't allow dogs on campus that he brought a trained bear instead. He then tried to enroll the bear as a student (unsuccessful). So it comes as no surprise that when his beloved dog Boatswain passed, he requested the dog be buried in the grave assigned for himself with verses like "To mark a friend's remains these stones arise/ I never knew but one and here he lies." Typical Byron. 

A lady and her lapdog

On the other end of the scale, we have the 18th century, which was like the Hot Girl Summer of Europe. Everyone was excited about the new scientific discoveries, beginnings of industrialization, rise of democratic ideas, and exploration in the Americas. 

18th century men WISHED they could be a little dog

The concept of pets was also relatively new. People begin keeping tame dogs, birds, and even monkeys just for companionship instead of for work. The idea of mourning the death of an animal as something more than just missing a food source was new, and people didn't know what to say when a pet died. 

Men being men, it was along the lines of  "haha... what if I were your dog, would you, like, pet me? jkjk... unless..." or "Women are like birds because I don't respect them". Then they would write something like "Why would women prefer a nice, nonverbal dog to me, a guy who wrote a 17 page long poem about how women are dumb? They must be hysterical." In any case, it wasn't ever really about the animal. 

 So how should we approach the death of a pet? For many children, this is one of the first times they are confronted with the idea of mortality, so it's not something to just cover up with "Mittens ran away to a butterfly farm". However, it's also part of living with animals, so it's not appropriate to grieve as intensely or as long as you would for a child or a spouse. 

Dr. Susan Stephens from the website Kids Plus Pediatrics recommends that you tell a child honestly that the pet died. Using euphemisms only makes it more confusing and difficult to process. For younger children, you may have to explain that death is a permanent state. However, she believes that it is okay to share with children your belief (or lack thereof) in an afterlife. 

People grieve in different ways. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry suggests that children may feel "sadness, anger, fear, denial, and guilt" when a pet dies. It is important to remind the child that they are not responsible for the death of the pet and to answer their questions about what death means. 

So, modern research suggests that there are many good ways to deal with the passing of a pet, which do not include "bury it in your grave with you" or "write horny poetry". Healthy ways to grieve can include talking and writing about the pet, holding a memorial service, drawing pictures, or making a scrapbook. 

I don't have a picture of Ham Solo, but he looked sort of like this

In conclusion, I'd like to dedicate this post to my cousin's recently deceased hamster, Ham Solo. I met him a few times and he was a cute little guy. Upon his passing, she wrote him a beautiful eulogy, saying "he was like a son to me I loved him SO SO SO much" and "we are all Proably Sad but this happends". There's something beautiful about that: love for an animal combined with acceptance that he is no longer with us.