Lost Companions: Reflections on the Death of Pets

By Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

A heartfelt exploration of human grief after the loss of a pet by the New York Times bestselling author of Dogs Never Lie About Love.

Over 84 million Americans—almost 3/4 of the US population—own a pet, and our society is still learning how to recognize and dignify that relationship with proper mourning rituals. We have only recently allowed the conversation of how to grieve for our non-human family members to come front and center.

Lost Companions fills a specific, important demand, a massive need in the market for an accessible, meaningful book on pet loss. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson takes a very personal, heartfelt approach to this difficult subject, allowing readers to explore their own responses and reactions, suggesting ways through and out of grief, as well as meaningful ways to memorialize our best friends.

Lost Companions is full of moving, thought-provoking and poignant stories about dogs, cats, horses, birds, wombats and other animals that beautifully illustrate the strong bond humans form with them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jun 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781250202246

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is the author of twenty-five books, including the New York Times bestselling When Elephants Weep and Dogs Never Lie About Love, as well as The Pig Who Sang to the Moon, The Face on Your Plate, and The Assault on Truth. An American, he lives in New Zealand.

Book preview

Preface

My Encounter with the Angel of Death

The dog of your boyhood teaches you a great deal about friendship, and love, and death: Old Skip was my brother. They had buried him under our elm tree, they said—yet this wasn’t totally true. For he really lay buried in my heart.

—WILLIE MORRIS, MY DOG SKIP

I have just finished reading the fine book by Frans de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Teach Us about Ourselves. The title of the book comes from an extraordinary moment in the relation between two different species: Mama as she was called by the humans who observed her at Burgers Zoo at Arnhem in the Netherlands, was the matriarch chimpanzee in a large colony. She had become close, over many years, with the distinguished Dutch zoologist Jan van Hoof (emeritus professor of behavioral biology at Utrecht University and cofounder of the Burgers colony). A month before she turned fifty-nine, she lay dying. Her friend, the zoologist, was about to turn eighty. They had known each other for more than forty years but he had not seen her for a long time. When Jan heard she was dying, he came to say good-bye. This was in 2016, and somebody who was there took a cell phone video of what transpired. It is astonishing. The chimps actually live on a forested island in the zoo, the largest such structure in the world (to me this is still a form of captivity, but that is a discussion for another day). Mama was confined to a cage since her attendants had to attempt to feed her. She was lying on a straw mat, and would not move or eat or drink. What happened next, caught on video and seen more than ten million times, is heartrending.¹

Her carers are attempting to feed her with a spoon, but she refuses both food and drink. She is listless, and hardly responsive. She looks very close to death. But Jan comes in and begins to stroke her. She slowly rouses herself, and then looks up. She looks somewhat bewildered as if not understanding who is there. But then it appears she recognizes him, and she suddenly gives a shriek of delight. He pats her saying over and over, yes, yes, it is me, and she reaches out to him with a giant and unmistakable smile on her face, and reaches up to touch his face with her finger, very gently. He reassures her with gentle words of comfort. She combs his hair with her fingers. He strokes her face, and she touches his head over and over, as he says, yes, Mama, yes. She pulls him closer until their faces are touching. They are both clearly moved far beyond words, and Jan goes silent as he continues to stroke Mama’s face. She then falls back into her fetal position. She died a few weeks later. I defy anyone to watch this encounter without being moved to tears.

But why? Why do we cry when we see this love across the species barrier? I believe it is a deep and ancient longing, to bond with a member of a different species. It is something of a miracle that we have created the possibility of doing this with great ease between two domesticated species: cats and dogs. There are many people who also achieve this with horses and with birds, and a few who experience it with completely wild species. I will write about all of these in this book. But what I am writing about here is not just the fact that we have achieved this miracle, and that we are both astonished and delighted by our success, but that we are as reluctant to give it up, at the end, as we are when the same circumstances force us to depart from our loved humans. There is no greater challenge than facing the death of a beloved intimate, whether it be your mother or father, your child, your friend, your spouse, or the animal you have come to love like any other member of the family. What we see in the video of Mama’s Last Hug, is that it can happen even with a wild animal, and even one in captivity. Death seems to be the great leveler here, and it does not matter who mourns whom, the grief on both sides is tangible, and profound.

While immersed in writing this book, I had what Sigmund Freud called a big dream; that is, one freighted with significance. A woman with a bow and a quiver full of arrows suddenly appeared in front of me and my wife, Leila. I knew she was the Angel of Death. She offered me another life (A different life? This life, only longer?) if I would allow her to shoot me in the heart with an arrow. It will hurt and there will be a lot of blood, she explained. But the outcome would be that I could continue to live for a long time. I agreed. When it would take place was unclear. Later, still in the dream, I went on a bike ride in the hills with my twenty-three-year-old son, Ilan. When my bike lost a wheel, Ilan went into a cave to have it fixed and suddenly the sky changed colors dramatically. I knew the moment had come and I had a feeling unlike any I have ever had in real life, a mixture of terror and excitement. But even as I felt it, I knew that I would never have this feeling again. I was both at peace and also terribly frightened, because I understood that what was about to happen would be painful in the extreme. The Angel of Death was once again in front of me. She nodded as if to say the moment is here. She took a sharp arrow from her quiver, placed it on the string of her bow, drew the string back, and aimed at my heart. I steeled myself for the blow. This is it, I thought. This is the most important moment of your life. I was as frightened as I have ever been, but I was also intensely curious as to how it would play out. Suddenly I woke up. My heart was beating fast. I was still caught up in the dream. What struck me as unique was not the bargain, but the feeling I had when the Angel of Death came for me the second time and the sky changed. That was like no feeling I have ever actually experienced in real life. It was a dream feeling that I cannot describe. I could remember the feeling, though it began to fade as the day progressed, but I am at a loss to put it into words or to compare it to anything else I have ever felt. What moved me most forcibly was when the sky suddenly changed, becoming very dark, and then light again. It was as if something important was about to happen to the world, and then I knew it was just me. There was no change in the world, only in my own fate. When the angel appeared in front of me for the final time, I was frightened, but also in a kind of ecstasy. Death is not the end, I thought, without actually thinking it in so many words. I was intensely curious and deeply disappointed when I suddenly awoke—nobody woke me, I just woke up, perhaps out of fear of the coming arrow—that now I would never know what might have happened, even if it was only a dream. Would the blow hurt? But I would survive and know that now I would live for another twenty or thirty years?

It is not insignificant that I dreamed this while writing a book about death, and in particular the approaching death of our beloved dog Benjy, who is now living with Ilan in Berlin and is nearing his fourteenth birthday. I would love to make a bargain with the Angel of Death for Benjy—and while she is there, why not for me as well, as I begin to see the outlines of eighty in front of me? What could be more human than to wish for more life just as ours is coming to a close? This is also a universal desire that applies not just to ourselves, but to the animals in our lives. We wish they could live longer, even as long as we live.

We cannot look into the eyes of every other animal species on the planet (think of insects and reptiles), and see ourselves echoed. We cannot read what is happening inside every animal whose eyes we meet. I am of course not saying that the animals whose eyes tell us nothing are feeling nothing, simply that we are not attuned to each other. But we are attuned to certain animals. Primarily to dogs and cats, but there are also wild animals whose eyes betray deep feeling that we have little problem in reading.

The fear of anthropomorphizing, that is, attributing to animals thoughts and sentiments that belong strictly to humans, has been replaced by what some scientists are calling anthropodenial, that is, the all too common refusal to recognize our similarity to other animals, especially when it comes to feelings and emotions. It could well be, as I will describe later in the book, that some animals actually feel some emotions more deeply than we do (love in dogs, contentment in cats, mourning in elephants) but this is a field of inquiry that has not yet been sufficiently explored.

And at no time is there any greater understanding between living creatures than at the point of death. Suddenly we understand something, and it would appear they do, too. What that something is, is hard to put into words. It is known, felt, acknowledged, understood, but it does not easily lend itself to description, or even explanation. Anyone who has been present at the death of their dog knows what I am speaking about. Astonishingly, it can also happen with a far more alien species—in this case I am thinking of a whale. There was an article on the BBC News by Andreas Illmer about a travel blogger from the United States, Liz Carlson who, while hiking with a friend, came across 145 whales beached and dying on a remote New Zealand beach.²

It was one of these jaw-dropping moments, she told the BBC. "We came to the beach around sunset and spotted something in the shallows.

When we realized it was whales, we dropped everything and ran into the surf.

She’d seen whales in the wild before, she said, but nothing can prepare you for this, it was just horrific. The futility was the worst. They are crying out to each other and are talking and clicking, and there’s no way to help them.

Her friend, Julian Ripoll, set off for help.

She was alone, in despair, I’ll never forget their cries, the way they watched me as I sat with them in the water, how they desperately tried to swim, but their weight only dug them deeper into the sands, she wrote on Instagram.

My heart completely broke.

As does ours, the readers. What strikes me most is that the whales looked to her for help, much as our dogs do in their dying moments. Is there nothing you can do? is the message I get, as did she, which is why she said her heart was breaking because the only answer is no, there is nothing I can do except witness your end.

This is a book about witnessing the end. Are we perhaps the angels of death? Alas, we have no power to bargain on behalf of our loved ones. But we are not helpless. We can do more than simply witness the death of our beloved animals. We can help them in their last moments and that help makes an enormous difference to them (and probably to us as well). In this book I will look at just how this happens, and what I and others have found most helpful that we can do for our animals as they approach the end. Knowing that we are literally there makes an enormous difference to them. This is the least we owe them. It is heartbreaking, but everyone I have spoken to who has been there at the very end is glad, for their own sake, and for the sake of their loved companion, that they were there and fully present.

INTRODUCTION

Grieving for an Animal Is What Makes Us Human Animals

Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives.

—JOHN GALSWORTHY

It is a disorienting and odd feeling to have loved a dog or cat or another animal for so long, and suddenly realize that the end is approaching. This is such a complex feeling that we endure: the knowledge that a period in our life has come to an end; that the animal we have so loved and who has been such an important part of our everyday life, is about to leave us; that soon all we will have left are memories; that we are helpless to prevent what always strikes us as a death too soon. It is different than the impending death of a human companion—we can talk to them, and reminisce, and discuss what is happening. But when a dog feels the end approaching, and I am convinced they do, they turn their eyes to us in a different kind of way. We cannot entirely understand what they are asking, but it breaks our hearts

Reviews for Lost Companions

[carolee888 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I rarely read books about pets who die at the end. Why did I read this one? I think it was the charming cover picture of the golden retriever and gray an white cat on the cover. Loosing a pet has been very painful for me and most people. Each death has been different. My father understood me when my per budgie died and he gave me a small sturdy box which I lined with cotton balls and we had a funeral for Winky and buried him under the plum tree.I preferred the personal and sad stories in this book to the author's musings about different aspects of the death process. Frankly, I do not care to analyze what the animal might be thinking or not thinking.Being a vegetarian who leans towards being vegan. I have never understood why other people cannot accept my choice. I have always cared a great deal about animals that has grown to a deeper level throughout the years. I found it offensive to read about the Korean practice of raising dogs for eating. I knew about it before but I think that the author gave too much detail and stayed on the topic too long. Also the author discussed the idea of putting a dog or other animal down and expanded that to humans. That is an extremely complex and painful subject that i did not want to read about. I have formed my own ideas and will abide by them. This is just warning that it has been included in this book.I feel empathy for the author and his family for their lost pets, I believe it is the most difficult grieving for a pet it you have had a deep and loving relationship. Is the future grief worth it? For myself, I believe it is.I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the Publisher as a win from FirstReads but that in no way made a difference in my thoughts or feelings in this review.