ON THE LOSS OF A PET

Loving God, you brought this beloved animal into the life of N. [and N.] to share kindness, joy, and faithful companionship: Receive our thanks and praise for the

community between your animals and your people, and all the ways in which we bless each other’s lives; in your goodness, Blessed Creator, hear our prayer.

                                          ~   From the Service At The Loss Of A Beloved Animal, Episcopal Church

              In a recent edition of Christianity Today’s blog, Her-meneutics, Karen Swallow Prior offers a beautiful reflection on the loss of a pet.  I have had the honor of meeting Prior at events hosted by the Human Society of the United States Faith Outreach Department and I follow her on Twitter (@LoveLifeLitGod).  I am very grateful for such an eloquent and heartfelt voice for animals in the Christian community.  Nevertheless, I must take issue with a portion of what she says.  (For a related post, see Praying For Pets.)

            Prior opens her reflection recounting a time when, just days after having lost a pet, she had to travel to a conference, where she was still so overcome with grief she could not eat.  She writes:

If I had been mourning the death of a person, my life would have been understandably put on hold. I wouldn’t have been expected to go to work the day following her death. I could have cancelled my trip.

. . .

When a family member dies, the bereft are offered sympathy, support, and condolences, from meals and visits, to cards and flowers, to the funeral service, burial, and beyond. Not so when the family member that dies is a pet.

When we mourn the loss of a pet, we mourn alone.

Then, although acknowledging that the love we feel for our pets is very real, as is the loss we suffer when they are gone, she says, “I’m not going to argue that it should be otherwise.  Nor will I argue that the death of a pet should be treated with the same moral, emotional, or social weight as the death of a person. It should not.”  Here is where I take issue with Prior.  I think we enter deep waters here, and need proceed carefully, both pastorally and theologically.

First, Prior acknowledges that research indicates “for many people, the experience of losing a pet to death can be ‘far more intense’ than the death of a relative.” (I urge you to click though to the article hyperlinked in the quote – it is well worth reading.) This means that, as a pastoral matter, Christians (both ordained and lay) need to be responsive to the depth of loss our friends, colleagues, neighbors, and parishioners are experiencing.   It seems to me the “weight” we give a death needs to judged not by whatever “value” we assign to the deceased, but by the loss felt by the survivors.  If the loss of our companions, who greeted us at the door, got us playing when we were tired, cheered us when we were feeling low, made us laugh with their daily antics, and who loved us unceasingly and unconditionally, leaves us feeling bereft, we need the support of our friends and church communities.  We need space to grieve.  We may need to cancel that trip to the conference.  And we should not be made to feel somehow inadequate or silly or self-indulgent.  Grief at the loss of a pet must not remain, as Prior calls it, “the grief  . . . that dare[s] not speak its name.”  Where studies show – and personal experience confirms – that the loss of a pet can be as devastating (and in some cases more devastating) than the loss of a human companion, the loss needs to be acknowledged and honored.

            Sympathy cards for the loss of a pet are readily found, cremation services and burial places are available, and increasingly, liturgies for the loss of a pet are available.[1] We should not be embarrassed to use them, if they will help.[2]

            Loss is loss.  What difference does it make whether the loss is of a pet or a human?  Grief is not about societal expectation, and it is not about the deceased.  It is about the survivor learning how to live in a world where a loving presence (human or animal) that was once there is now gone.  Our role is to help. 

            That’s the pastoral side.

            Theologically, downplaying the loss of a pet is also fraught with pitfalls, it seems to me.  Prior declines to “argue that the death of a pet should be treated with the same moral, emotional, or social weight as the death of a person.”  I think it is worth examining this statement in pieces.  As to emotional weight, the studies referenced by Prior herself show that for many people the emotional impact of a loss of a pet is as severe as the loss of a human.  The emotional weight is there, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. (Nor is this some modern sensibility.  As this article shows, humans have been deeply grieving the loss of their pets since antiquity.)  Indeed, it is an indicator of our capacity for compassion, empathy, and love.  It is unclear to me how society or church families benefit from failing to lift that up. 

If by societal weight she means whether it would be acceptable to cancel the trip to the conference, I think we need to come back, again, to the depth of loss.  Society has not given people room to cancel plans for the death of a pet because we have not yet taken these deaths seriously or recognized what these deaths mean for the people left to deal with them.  Do we, as a society, want to recognize pain and give people time to heal (if they need or want it), or do we want them to carry on regardless?  I think different segments of society will answer this question differently.   For Christian communities, it comes back again to the pastoral concerns for the survivor and the kinds of people we want to become. 

            But what about “moral weight”?  Here, I think, is where the theological piece comes in.  Failure to give pet deaths moral weight is what has caused a failure to give them emotional and societal weight. They are “only animals,” after all, so it shouldn’t matter.  But the thing is, as studies show, it does matter.  A great deal.  Maybe they are not so “only,” after all.

            I have reflected in previous posts, in particular this one, on the idea that humans, as uniquely made in the image of God, are more “valuable” than all other animals.  I believe Scripture tells us that our creation in God’s image is not so much a factor of value as it is an imposition of responsibility.  Our value, and the value of other animals, comes from the fact that we are loved by God.  If it can be said that we have greater value (and honestly, I don’t really know how you compare the value of one life to another; we are all as nothing when compared to the One who gave His life), it can only come from the fact that we are tasked with an important job: to reflect the character of God to creation, most especially the animals.  When we do not do that job, when we puff ourselves up at the expense of those at our mercy, our value is greatly diminished.  Most of us undertake that care-taking job most directly with our pets.   

Animal lives matter inherently: God calls them “good,” takes delight in them, and covenants with them, wholly apart from their relationships with humans.  Animals are imbued with the same “nephesh” – breathe of life – that humans are given.  (For example, Genesis 1 and 2.)  Animal deaths matter, too.   If the lives and deaths even of sparrows are significant to God, should not the lives and deaths of our pets have moral significance to us?

Animals also have moral significance because how we interact with them has a great deal to with the formation of our character and the right use of power.  In those relationships, we have the opportunity to grow closer to (or farther from) God as we undertake (or neglect) the task we were given by God at creation. 

            Prior reflects on one way pets can help us understand the character of God and the human relationship with God.  Prior suggests, “Animals show us what our own fragility looks like before God. . . . When we love an animal, we bring with that love all the might and grace of one both in and above the world of that creature. . . . I think perhaps we are no more like God than when we love an animal.”  Here is a statement of the enormous responsibility we have as humans in relation to God and animals.  Working that responsibility out in day to day life seems to me to be a matter of great moral weight.

Finally, I always cringe when I hear Christians talk about how humans are more important, more significant, more valuable than animals and that we matter more to God.  The corollary is that we should not “waste” resources (financial, natural, or emotional) on animals.  I hear in these words the words of the Pharisees saying the Israelites, as God’s chosen people, were more important than the Samaritans, the Canaanite woman, the tax collectors, and the Gentiles.  I hear them saying that they could stand on their status before God and disregard the needs of those less “valuable” to God. 

Prior, of course, is not saying that.  Indeed, she specifically refutes the idea that we must choose between caring for animals and caring for humans, pointing out that God’s is a “both/and” economy.  She is a strong and important Christian voice for animals. Yet . . . yet, it seems to me she takes a step in the wrong direction, disregarding what Richard Bauckham calls our “common creatureliness” with the animals, by saying so decisively, “Nor will I argue that the death of a pet should be treated with the same moral, emotional, or social weight as the death of a person. It should not.”  Perhaps; but these are very tricky scales, and I don’t think the weights are quite so easily sorted out.  The idea that humans are more important before God is one that has led to untold suffering in God’s creation and, thereby, a great deal of sin. We need to be mindful of how many human thumbs we are putting on the scales. 

My beloved, and still very much missed, Winston

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[1] One such liturgy, authorized by the Episcopal Church, is the source of the opening quote in this post, and is available on the web page of the Episcopal Network for Animal Welfare.

[2] It is always important to remember, of course, that grief is a deeply personal thing, and everyone grieves differently, whether for the loss of a human or a pet.  What is helpful to one person, may only make things harder for another.