Sep 21st, 2017, 10:41 PM

Immortalizing Our Beloved Pets

By Beth Grannis
Cimetière des Chiens in Paris. Image Credit: Beth Grannis.
A walk through the Cimetière des Chiens evokes the love we feel for those we've lost.

It’s a wet heat that stings your blurry eyes so bitterly and maliciously that you fear your physical perception might never recover. It’s a heavy, weighted anchor whose rusted chain entwines itself into your heart and moors itself down, dark into your stomach, destroying any opportunity of seizing a rejuvenating breath. And even though the unhealed hurt is so vast and so uniquely treacherous for each of us who has lost someone, we still, unabashedly continue to love.

This particular type of love I’m describing, because there are many variations of this mosaic emotion, is the love we feel for our pets. For this rare, unconditional, and indefinite kind of love which consumes our hearts wholly yet takes advantage of the few complications, complexities, and messy emotions we often encounter in human relationships. 

Image credit: Beth Grannis

The loss of a pet is like the sudden abduction of a most beloved friend and companion. Of someone whose secrets are whispered gently into warm, furry ears and whose foreheads support the cheeks of their sorrowful owners. How many sighs have been breathed in and out in trusted confidence?

Image credit: Beth Grannis

Even the sweet air at the Cimetière des Chiens et Autres Animaux Domestiques is a sobering and nostalgic reminder of pets past; of summertime flowers with near-bee stings on wet noses and wintertime trudges through snow banks, leashes entangled amidst legs. But something more heartbreaking struck me as I meandered between the rows of graves. Not only are these pets gone, cherished companions to so many people; but now their owners, too, are merely memories in many minds whose descendants only know of them through stories told at infrequent family reunions. Animal tombstones so ancient and long unvisited, that velvet moss blankets the once legible engravings that over a century of rain has since pounded smooth.

Image credit: Beth Grannis

But for every grave that lies lapsed, lies a nurtured, tended to, and cared for tribute to a deceased pet. There is Kenzo, a St. Bernard who prided himself as a “grand amateur de fromage” ; and Bobette, a mutt who will “never be forgotten”. There even rests Bunga, a bunny who is always missed; and Plouf, a Yorkshire Terrier whose replenished stockpile of daisies is more than I ever might expect at my own tribute to passing.

I spent the rainy morning tangling my steps and touring the grounds, the turf-churned soil beneath my shoes, and still the one feeling exhaled from the immortal earth was love. Swollen-hearted, mournful, enchanting love.

Image credit: Beth Grannis

Image credit: Beth Grannis

Image credit: Beth Grannis

Some of the engraved, somber scriptures celebrating special memories nicked marks on my own heart as I contemplated the person behind the pet. I imagined a gathering of owners at the cemetery. Some alive and standing present, vibrant with hurt and some dead and still their ghosts pulsating with pain; but what about those still living whose aches were so unendurable that they didn’t attend? Those who have surrendered to the misery and who have succumbed to the torment of grief. Those who were so severely wronged by other humans in past years, that their only source of salvation was seen in the soul of an animal.

Image credit: Beth Grannis

Our domesticated family members of the wild engage us in purely joyful moments and even allow us to feel understood, stripped of reticence, and encourage us to embrace life’s dwindling opportunities to be silly and childlike. But for our pets, when time’s covetous hands sprout white fur around their eyes and leave elbows dry and callused, I can’t help but feel that they believe they are letting us down. Perhaps justifying that their briefer season on Earth warrants bearing the disappointment, when it is us who feel responsible for the disappointment. The bond between pet and owner is so reciprocated, so harmonious, and honest that we feel fully at blame when our pet's lives ends. 

Image credit: Beth Grannis

For years, every fluttered nuance is empathetically absorbed by both human and animal; every pet's nudge to the knee when hunger arises, every stretch and yawn followed by that heavy, fulfilled sigh is understood just as every owner's defeated slump on the couch after a tough day and every empty suitcase heaved from the closet, soon to be packed and carried away, is understood by the pet. It's an intuitive relationship. One where both man and beast grow to rely on one another for company, friendship, emotional and physical support and in many situations, offer more loyalty to each other than some family members can offer. It's an intangible connection, even lacking a mutually comprehended way in which to communicate, but it is an affinity that relies entirely on instinct, perception, and an unexplainable, deeply rooted understanding of each other. Two akin spirits whose unwavering bond of trust, even if challenged by death, will never fracture.