The God Squad: The spiritual necessity of pets

Hi, Rabbi Gellman, I just found your old article on losing a pet. All of your articles "speak" to me, but this one touched me deeply. We have lost Franklin, Eleanor, Miss Kitty, Spenser and my love, Teddy. We laugh, we cry remembering our fur babies. Your article was so heartwarming. On this New Year's Eve, I thank you and wish you peace, kindness and many blessings. – (From M in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn)

A: Thank you, dear M, for your kind words about one of my favorite articles (an updated version is included below).

My love for animals began when I began. My grandfather, Leo Gellman, was a zookeeper at the Milwaukee Zoo and my childhood memories included walking onto monkey island with my coat stuffed with grandma Sara’s mandel bread. I was instantly covered by a “monkey coat” reaching into my pockets to extract the goodies. Later in life we raised guide dogs.

As the year turns I want to ask you to share your stories about what pets have done for you. I am not asking how you felt about losing them to the angel of death. I am asking what they did for your soul when they lived with you.

The Death of Miles

A letter to Dr. Alan Coren, owner and veterinarian at West Hills Animal Hospital, Huntington, Long Island.

Dear Alan,

I wanted to write to thank you properly and personally for your compassion and care for Miles through his life and up to his last moments when Miles died on the blanket you had spread out for us in exam room two. Miles' debilitating renal failure was a death sentence, and thankfully his suffering is now over.

As Miles turned cold in my arms and entered a breathless eternal sleep, I was utterly unprepared for the flood of tears and grief I felt at his death. I still find myself instinctively moving my feet under my desk expecting to slip them under Miles' head.

I bury people, and I know that grief at the death of a pet is not the same as the grief at the death of a person, but it is still grief. It is still deep and raw and real and shattering to our admittedly irrational expectations that we will never be separated from those we love.

I tell people I counsel through their grief to try to give thanks for their grief because grief is the only true measure of love. Buddhists teach that the first Noble Truth is that suffering (dukkah) arises from our attachments to the beings of the world. Unlike Buddhists, I do not seek the removal of attachment (tanhakaya). I am happy to be a mess of tears now because I was, and my family was, loved by Miles unconditionally, and I savor this grief as my way to repay the gift of unconditional love.

I also understand the bewilderment and impatience of those who have never loved an animal. Many of them openly or privately harbor condescending thoughts about pet lovers who often seem to inappropriately lavish love on creatures with four legs that they cannot find the spiritual generosity to lavish on creatures with two.

I think the issue is spiritual proximity. We mourn what we are closest to. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote,“What seems to us more important, more painful, and more unendurable is really not what is more important, more painful and more unendurable, but merely that which is closer to home.

Everything distant which for all its moans and muffled cries, its ruined lives and millions of victims, that does not threaten to come rolling up to our threshold today, we consider endurable and of tolerable dimensions.”

I mourn the dead victims of the wars and famines that are eating away the hope of the world, but I cannot and will not feel embarrassed at feeling bereft because of the death of my dog. I know. I know that they are not on the same moral level, but I remain convinced that the ability to cry for one tutors the tears for the other.

Alan, I know that you help families move through the grief of the death of a pet as often as I help families move through the grief of the death of a person. I know they need my steady soul to make it through the valley of the shadow. I just wanted you to know how much I needed you and how much I love you and thank you. You were a rabbi to a rabbi, and you were the steady soul of caring for a very good dog whom I loved more than I ever understood until this sad but healing moment.

God bless you, Marc.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)