At a webinar put on a few years ago by the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, Robert Gierka, EdD, discussed the concept of disenfranchised grief, which is grief over the loss of a loved one that is not socially acknowledged or considered legitimate. Such losses, Dr. Gierka said, traditionally consist of miscarriage, the loss of a same-sex partner, and the loss of a loved one through capital punishment. There’s also the loss of a pet.
The grief itself can’t be denied, Dr. Gierka says. That’s a psychological status. It just is. The disenfranchisement comes in the lack of bereavement. Bereavement is a social status conferred by others, the doctor avers. People validate the loss by acknowledging it with socially sanctioned responses—attending a funeral, paying a visit,
and so on.
But “many people still misunderstand the spiritual connection people often have with their companion animals and the intense grief they experience when that animal is gone,” Dr. Gierka says. That’s why bereavement—public affirmation that the loss is meaningful—has been missing from pet loss.
Rachel Geller, EdD, agrees. “It almost feels like people need permission to mourn the loss of a pet,” she said during the webinar. “When a family member dies, you have a playbook.” There’s a funeral. People send a condolence card or donate to a charity. They bring over food. Depending on the faith tradition, there may be a wake that people attend, or a visit to someone’s home while they’re sitting shiva. “There are norms for human death, but we don’t have this support for pet death,” she said.
It’s for that reason that Dr. Geller, Dr. Gierka, and others have become pet chaplains—a growing group of individuals who offer pastoral care to people who have lost a dog or a cat.
Chaplaincy for someone who has lost a pet can become in certain ways more important than for someone who has lost a human. “When you lose a parent, that’s big,” Dr. Gierka says. But you’re not necessarily with that person every day. You may not have daily rituals that define your relationship. But when you lose a pet, your rituals disappear immediately. “You’re task-adrift,” the doctor says. You’re not feeding your animal, snuggling with it, or doing whatever it is you do every day with that living, breathing being.
Talking to a pet chaplain who engages you spiritually “helps you feel agency in the process” of grieving, he says, “rather than just sitting alone and crying.” Maybe you’re saying a prayer. Maybe you’re lighting a candle. Maybe your approach is secular and you just want to talk, but you still want to put punctuation marks to what you’re going through. As Dr. Gierka puts it, rituals in your grieving “kind of take care of you while you’re in shock, in disbelief. They keep you busy when you can’t stand to just sit there.” That’s in part what’s accomplished with the rituals surrounding the death of human loved ones. They blunt the starkness of the loss when it is so near, so immediate.
An evident need
Calls to the Tufts Pet Loss Support Hotline (508-839-7966) reflect the depth of people’s mourning, the often quite spiritual nature of their grief, and their need to discuss it rather than just act like everything’s okay. Many wonder if their pet will go to heaven and, by extension, if they’ll see them there someday. Others express frustration or despair that their loss has not been taken seriously enough or has been pooh poohed. Some talk about how much their pet meant to them and how they are struggling without their animal.
How a pet chaplain works
Pet chaplains often take their cue from the people who reach out to them. Some may want a very organized response—perhaps a funeral or a memorial service. Maybe they want to create a little shrine in their home and light a candle. Maybe they simply want to have a prayer recited for their pet.
Others just want to emote or to memorialize their pet in conversation. Dr. Geller interacts more often with people who have cats, but her approach works across the range of those missing their pet, as her examples show. “I try to ask kind of open-ended questions and let the person talk and sort of see where it goes,” she says. “One woman was telling me that after her cat died, her kids said she had to get rid of the cat beds and the food. I told her it was okay to keep the cat beds around if she wasn’t ready yet. She broke into tears. It was a big moment for her in her grieving process.” She wasn’t ready to let go.
“Another woman started off by saying she was single and had a sister she was very close to and always gave birthday presents and attended parties and graduations and other life events for her sister’s kids. But when her cat died—she had had this cat for 18 years—she didn’t get a call, a card, an ‘I’m sorry.’ And she was really hurt. Her sister knew how much she loved and doted on this cat.
“I’ve done services for people as well, funerals,” Dr. Geller says, “over Zoom, in people’s homes, in their backyards. I’ll do whatever the grieving owner wants. There are a lot of passages in the Bible that suggest animals have feelings, thoughts, that they’re sentient beings. There’s something in the Old Testament that says if you’re going to take the eggs from a mother bird’s nest, do it when she’s not there so she won’t feel distressed seeing them taken. So if you think of the emotional distress of an animal, it’s not a big leap to assume they have a soul as well.”
Dr. Gierka says it’s a matter of allowing people to take the lead in validating their grief, in creating their bereavement, whether religious or secular. “You’ve got a cultural resistance to this—that’s what we’re trying to overcome.”
Choosing a pet chaplain
Pet chaplaincy is still “kind of a wild, wild west,” Dr. Gierka says. There is no universally recognized certification or licensure. Thus, when you look online, it’s hard to know the quality of what you’re viewing. Dr. Gierka’s own site is petchaplain.com. He is a Stephen minister (a lay congregation member who has been trained to provide one-to-one care for those experiencing a difficult time in life) and has worked as a chaplain in a human hospital along with training more than 100 pet chaplains online through a 15-week program. He also offers a monthly pet loss support group conducted via Zoom. His services are free, as are Dr. Geller’s, who is at the ready for someone mourning the loss of a dog as well as a cat (drrachelcatbehavior.com).
Additionally, there is the Unitar-ian Universalist Animal Ministry (uuam.org), with dozens of chapters in the U.S. and a number of animal chaplains. Another site is that of Sarah Bowen (thisissarahbowen.org), author of Sacred Sendoff. Like Dr. Gierka, she trains people to become animal chaplains. More names and information can be found, in part, at animalchaplain.info (run by an ordained interfaith minister) and findanimalchaplain.com.
Since grief and bereavement are to a large degree subjectively evaluated and considered, the right person for you to talk with and perhaps rely on to help plan a ritual for your departed pet is the one who feels right for you. Dr. Gierka believes that one thing a good pet chaplain does is help people understand that “in the fullness of time, they will stay connected to their pet” even when separated by death. “It’s not moving on that we do,” he feels; it’s holding on to what’s meaningful and referring to it throughout your life.
Then, too, says Dr. Gierka, so much of pet chaplaincy is helping people get the story out. His brother died when he was two years old, and he was told he went to heaven. There was a funeral and other markers of that life event. A year later his dog was euthanized, and nobody spoke to him about it. “I didn’t cry about it till I was 60,” he says. “I fell on the bed crying. These are long-term losses. Our stories are caught in our throats. We want to help people tell their story, feel bereaved, feel loved—you know, have love around you.”
