Grieving Your Pet? Here s Why You Shouldn t Feel Pressured to Rush the Process
22 Shares I shouldn t have let him out this morning, I said tearfully my face buried in my hands. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and I d just learned that my pet cat, Polo, had been hit by a car and killed.
I spent the next week weeping more often than not, and showering my other two cats with even more affection than usual. I alternated between deep sadness, guilt, anger, and disbelief more than once I thought I heard Polo playing on my porch. I knew he was dead; his body was whole enough for me to pet him one last time before we buried him with his favorite toy, but it had already started to stiffen from rigor mortus. I watched my dad bury him, and I decorated his grave with stones, pinecones, and bits of pine needles from the forest floor when the burial was finished. Yet in the early days following his death, I still half-expected to see Polo running through the woods behind my cabin,