Losing a 'best friend'
Grief-filled companions have a place to turn after death of a pet
September 26, 2003
by Dave Ford
The San Francisco Chronicle
Betty Carmack is listening. This is what she
does. She listens. It is 7:50 on a Thursday night at the
Fillmore Street complex of Pets Unlimited, and Carmack is taking
questions after giving a lecture on grieving pet loss, her
specialty.
She listens as Diane Robbins cries.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Robbins' 11-year-old shepherd-collie
mix, Chloe, died after a long fight against various illnesses.
"How do I be at home without her there?"
Robbins asks, her voice quivering. "I'm afraid I'm going to fall
apart without her presence in my life."
To an outside observer, that may sound silly.
After all, this is a dog. A dog is a pet. Its passing should be
duly noted and grieved appropriately -- that is, quickly. Right?
Wrong, according to Carmack. A registered
nurse and counselor, she has for two decades facilitated a
monthly pet loss support group at the San Francisco SPCA.
Earlier this year she released "Grieving the Loss of a Pet," a
book full of stories and tips for those in the throes of the raw
agony that accompanies the loss -- sudden or otherwise -- of an
animal companion. She offers individual counseling in pet loss.
Carmack says those who diminish pet grief
likely have never had an animal companion.
"If someone has had this experience," she
says, "they don't just say, 'Oh, my God, it's just a cat,' or
'It's been two weeks, isn't she over it?' "
Carmack suggests Robbins wrap herself up in
Chloe's bedding and allow herself to cry. When she says this,
Robbins begins to sob. Carmack suggests Robbins light candles in
her home: "It gives a glow, a warmth -- the house doesn't feel
so bare, so cold." She suggests Robbins capture memories by
writing in a journal at the times she would normally play with,
walk or feed Chloe. Finally, she suggests that when it becomes
too much, Robbins leave home and stay with friends.
"If this was an 11-year-old child, no one
would expect you to be alone," Carmack says. "They would come
over to your house, or invite you to theirs."
Later, Robbins says she'd heard about the
lecture two nights before, when she brought a struggling Chloe
to Pets Unlimited for a checkup.
"This meeting was very serendipitous," she
says. "It really validated what I've already been able to do.
I'm at peace with Chloe's loss."
Carmack leans forward in one-on-one
conversation, her deep brown eyes locked on her subject's. Her
salt-and-pepper hair lies close to her head. Her lips are thin,
her mouth wide. It is possible, in her presence, to feel both
gently exposed and completely protected.
She listens more than she talks, an art developed during 40
years of caretaking. In listening, she says, it is essential "to
be present to someone when they are sharing this very deep grief
they've maybe never shared. ... Being here and not there."
Jyl Cohen of Berkeley saw Carmack's skill
during a group she participated in after the June 1998 death of
her Abyssinian-tabby mix, Muffy.
"When she's facilitating, she's so present
with every person," Cohen says, adding, "I just think the
ability to listen to every person who comes into that group is
very unusual. ... She's not thinking of 80 other things, not
looking here and there. ... You are the only person who exists
for her at that time."
Carmack was born and raised in Atlanta and
attended Emery University's nursing school. She came to San
Francisco in 1968 to teach at the University of California at
San Francisco School of Nursing. Seven years later, she wound up
at the University of San Francisco School of Nursing, where she
is a professor of nursing and chair of the Department of
Community and Mental Health Nursing. (She declines to give her
age -- "People can do the math," she says with a chuckle -- or
to talk about her personal life.) She has been a pet-loss
counselor for 21 years, has a clinical practice that includes
pet- loss grief and has been a consultant at humane shelters and
research facilities. She has written about Animal Assisted
Therapy (the use of animals to help humans improve their mental,
emotional and/or physical health) and pet loss and the elderly,
among other topics.
But it is the monthly two-hour pet loss
support group, begun in 1983 and meeting on the first Tuesday of
each month, that symbolizes Carmack's dedication. Roughly 10
participants sit in a circle around a central altar decorated
with a candle and a box of tissues. They share stories of their
animals, pass around pictures and perform rituals. The group,
Carmack says, provides grieving pet guardians a chance to be
witnessed and validated in a society that sometimes does neither
for them.
In the same way the group serves its
participants, it seems to serve Carmack as a life calling to
vindicate a pet loss of her own -- and the terrible guilt that
followed.
On the last day of a rafting vacation on the
Trinity River in June 1978, Carmack, a friend named Bill and
Carmack's 10-year-old dachshund, Rocky, found themselves caught
in swirling waters that slammed them into low-hanging branches
at the river's edge. Bill was knocked overboard. Carmack made
the split-second decision to follow him.
She grabbed Rocky by the collar and hauled him
over. An inexperienced swimmer, Carmack struggled, with Bill's
help, to keep Rocky -- and herself - - above water. But she
found her grip on Rocky slipping, and, as she writes in her
book:
"I don't remember all the details, but I do
remember the moment of letting go of his collar and seeing him
float down the river with his little head above the water. This
is my last image of him."
An image that is harrowing -- and
guilt-producing.
"Guilt that I couldn't save him, guilt that I
had to let go of him," Carmack says. "I took on that whole
responsibility that I should have been able to hang on to him."
Getting past the pain was, for Carmack, a
longtime process -- and a life-changing one, inasmuch as it
sparked her career as a pet-loss counselor and educator.
"I think that was a big part of me being able
to do my healing," she says, "to see that (Rocky) would not have
died in vain, because something positive would come from it."
Guilt such as that suffered by Carmack over
Rocky's loss appears to be one of the strongest feelings
pervading imminent or present-moment pet loss. At Carmack's
lecture, two women separately talk about their older dogs, both
of whom are sick, and express guilt that they might feel relief
at the passing of their pets.
Robbins adds, "I always felt guilty because I wasn't home
enough. Now," she says, referring to the emptiness awaiting her
at home, "it's like, 'Arrgh. ' "
For Ilana Strubel, who lives in Bernal Heights
with her partner, Michelle McAnanama, guilt was a terrible
companion after the unexpected death last year of her and
McAnanama's 10-year-old dachshund, Joey. Strubel, a veterinarian
who practices at the Linda Mar Veterinary Hospital in Pacifica,
made a decision, in consultation with colleagues, that Joey
needed an MRI after he'd suffered a number of seizures.
"Dogs with seizures are risks for anesthesia,
and he had to have it," Strubel says. "He died right there. I
felt incredible amounts of guilt and responsibility for making
that decision."
That evening she called Carmack, whom she knew
professionally. The next morning, Carmack came by the house.
"She did what she always does -- listened,
offered comfort," Strubel says, adding that, in her experience,
vets aren't always properly trained in grief counseling. "It's
an art, and that's where (Betty's) expertise is really
valuable."
In many ways, the grief of losing a beloved
pet is not much different than that of losing a beloved human.
The initial cutting misery is followed by numbness --
depression, a sense of abandonment, guilt, anger -- crosscut by
smashing waves of heartache. Passing time leaves a dull ache
mixed with a bittersweet sense of healing.
But in some ways, pet-loss grief is unique. Ask any pet expert
-- or guardian -- how love factors into the human-animal bond,
and one word pops up repeatedly: unconditional. When people love
animals unconditionally, the loss is immeasurable. As Carmack
puts it, "With great love comes great grief."
Says Cohen, a speech and language therapist,
"It's a heart connection. You bypass verbiage."
Cohen lost Muffy to mammary cancer after a
mere three-week spell of obvious illness. "This was the first
animal I'd had in my adult life," she says, adding, "I was just
so unprepared. ... I didn't know how I'd get through it because
it was like having a body part cut off."
Bereft, Cohen called Bay Area animal
organizations seeking support groups. She found Carmack's, where
she listened to others' stories of imminent or current loss.
That helped in unexpected ways.
"When I went home after the first group, I
could think about another person and their story," she says. "It
was like a community of grievers, and I felt less isolated and
alone."
Cohen is quick to say she is surrounded by
supportive people, but adds, "When you connect with a person
going through the same thing, it's different from what you get
from family and friends."
For those people who have lost touch with or
been abandoned by family, the loss of a pet is particularly
agonizing.
That's the case with many clients of Pets Are Wonderful Support,
says its executive director, Erin Farrell. PAWS is a San
Francisco volunteer-based organization that helps people living
on a limited income, and with HIV/AIDS and other disabling
illnesses, to keep their companion pets.
"Because many of our clients are isolated,
having that companionship is really, really important to them,"
Farrell says.
When clients lose pets, Farrell's group often
refers them to Carmack. "She's sensitive, and she knows what
she's talking about," Farrell says. "She's wonderful."
Carmack says she was the first in the Bay Area
to propose a pet-loss group. Now, such groups flourish locally
and nationally, and many animal shelters provide "grief rooms"
for bereft pet guardians. Still Carmack's group provides a
magnet for those who want more than comforting pats on the back
from well-meaning friends.
Shortly after losing Muffy, Cohen found a sparky little cat she
named Angel, whom she believed was sent to her by Muffy for
companionship in her grief. But Angel died suddenly, at 5 -- two
days before the fifth anniversary of Muffy's death. The
experience took Cohen apart -- and put her together anew, after
she returned to Carmack's group. "It sort of sensitizes you to
the possibility of loss," she says of an animal's sudden death.
"But the blessing in that is that you value and treasure every
day you have."
And she might share the experience in
Carmack's group, her first visit to which Cohen recalls with a
heavy chuckle.
"I never in my life dreamed I was going to a
pet-loss support group," she says, "and there I was with
everybody crying and telling their stories -- and it was just an
amazing experience."
In this sense, Carmack has well-served Rocky,
her long-ago dachshund. She does it by listening -- aided, now,
by her current dog, Sarah, a 15-year-old terrier mix.
Animals, she says, "remind us of our
connection to nature, how that nurtures and feeds our soul.
(Animals') rhythms remind us of those larger rhythms. They don't
get caught up in work. They're simple. Sarah reminds me what is
important in life."
A reflective pause. Carmack's eyes survey the
floor. They then lock again on her conversational partner's, and
she adds, "Slowing down. Taking time to be present and enjoy the
moment."
(From The San Francisco Chronicle, September
26, 2003)
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