$ Across the Rainbow Bridge: Grieving the Death of a Pet (BeADisciple.com)

The loss of a beloved animal companion is like no other loss because our relationship with animals are like no other. Our culture tells us that an animal companion is an engaging toy, and that our grief over its death is alarming and ill-placed. Our culture is just flat wrong. The love and comfort of animals mean more to us than we know. Their partnership with us is a holy one that endures across a lifetime and possibly beyond.

For most of us, the loss of an animal will be our first experience with death. In this way, animals give us a most precious and intimate gift, the opportunity to learn how to live through grief, and to learn that we can live through grief. If we diminish the loss in our own eyes, subdue it, tell ourselves it has no meaning, then we will deflate the enormous value of this gift. Not only does the animal-human bond defy statistics and numbers and double-blind studies, but it defies words as well.

The relationship we experience with our pets can sometimes be among the deepest ones we will ever experience in our lives. The sincerity, humility, dedication, purpose, courage, devotion, joy and love that we have learned from our pets will stay with us forever.

We will take time and learn how to create a funeral or memorial service. All our beloved pets who have crossed the Rainbow Bridge and into the Animal’s Eden are waiting for their special humans, are free to do whatever they want. There they wait in this Eden for us to come. There is nothing more joyful than a reunion between dear friends who have been apart too long.

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