Goodbye from a Pet: Helping Kids Through Loss
Obviously animals can’t speak (like humans anyway), but they certainly communicate. If you’ve ever experienced the joy of having a pet, you probably know what I mean.
Getting to know a pet and witness their quirks and unique “language” is such a gift. It’s like peeking through a portal into another living world. One that is simple and full of love.
I often say that the pets were sent to save the humans. They teach us compassion and acceptance with their unconditional love. An animal’s life span may be shorter than ours, but the impact they have on us makes their passing all the more difficult.
For kids, I can only imagine the weight of that kind of loss. Life is always changing during childhood, with all the growing and learning taking place. But pets are often the constant. Having that seemingly disappear likely brings up all kinds of difficult emotions.
When my friend Doree had to cancel dinner plans because her daughter, Maddie, was struggling to say goodbye to her dying pet hamster, it broke my heart. Out of the blue, I started imagining what Mr. Fluffers would say to her if he could talk. The line “I’ll visit you in a rainbow and sing to you from the trees” popped into my mind and startled me a bit.
Because the thought came to me in the shower, as thoughts so often do, I pulled out my notebook after drying off to write down this moving lyric. Then, the rest of the rhymes came tumbling out. Rereading what I had written, I realized it was a farewell love letter from a pet.
I hopped on my computer, typed up “When a Pet Says Goodbye,” and formatted it as a poem to share with Maddie.
I’m sure Doree had no idea she was about to unlock a creative adventure when she said, “You should publish this,” but she absolutely gave me the nudge I needed.
As I began imagining what this might look like as a book, I thought about all the different animals a child might hold dear. Birds, horses, reptiles, cats, dogs, hamsters, etc. With the goal of keeping things simple and focused on the words, I decided to color the pages with footprints from different animals.
I, of course, gifted Maddie the first printed copy and also gave a few to our vet to offer families saying goodbye at her office.
Having curated supplemental material for another book, I began to feel that a piece was missing from “When a Pet Says Goodbye.” Would it be helpful for a child to write a goodbye letter to their pet? For some, maybe not. But for parents, teachers, or counselors who wanted additional support, I created a guided, fill-in-the-blank letter.
My intention with both the book and the letter template was to keep them broad enough to accommodate the different ways families understand death. There are many beautiful interpretations for where pets go when they are gone, and I didn’t want the story to be limited to only one.
Whatever a family believes, my hope is that “When a Pet Says Goodbye” helps children (and adults) acknowledge their grief and find comfort knowing their pet appreciated and loved them back.
