Mourning losses; small burials

When we realized that the bird that had hit our window had died, my daughter wanted to have a funeral service and bury her. She named her, wrote a note and placed it with her, and added some bird seed, a flower and some pine straw, things she thought the bird would like. We discussed how it would probably be better to not do a box and let nature take it's course. Some tissues for a burial shroud were our compromise. We dug a small hole in our little graveyard, the place where several hamsters and a gerbil have come to rest, said some words, and said goodbye.

To some this may seem strange, especially for a creature that wasn't even a pet, but I have to respect the impulse to mourn the passing of a little life and want to honor it. It reaffirms how precious life can be and helps us to deal with death, as we all will at some point in our lives.

The passing of each rodent has been accompanied by a eulogy and a similar ceremony. The same has been true of the fish, though I have to admit that fish have died so often at this point that my daughter is now willing to let them go in a simple water burial down the toilet!

My son is a little more philosophical about all this and less inclined to words and ceremonies. He seems to think "What's done is done, lets just move on... Can I have another?" :)

Fortunately, both were very young when our last dog passed away, and so they do not remember him the way my husband and I do. The grownups in this house still miss him. He was our baby before we had babies. When something is a part of your family for years the way and dog or cat can be, the impact can be that much more wrenching. My kids haven't felt this loss, but I know it'll come eventually, and in some ways these smaller losses can be a dress rehearsal for more weighty emotions.


“Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart” - John Adams


“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.” - William Shakespeare


“The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief. But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.” - Hilary Stanton Zunin