Helping Your Child Through the Loss

Creating a Memorial Garden for Pets

By Tanya Sousa

A child’s first experience with death is often the loss of a family pet. It might have had fur or scales, fins or hooves, but it is a loss if the child loved it or simply saw it as a safe, familiar presence that would always be there. Parents may or may not share the feelings of grief. However, it is important to remember this kind of swirling emotion is new to children. It is a moment to teach them ways to handle grief and loss. None of us want to let go of something cherished and loved. We have the need to hold on in some way...to remember. Helping your child create a memorial garden for the family pet is a healthy way to do this.

It isn’t unusual to hear a gardener say, “I find gardening so meditative”...or “so healing”...or “so prayerful”. I have walked through friends’ gardens as they run their hands lovingly over greenery and colorful petals, “I got this one from my parents’ old farm”, or “My friend Sophie gave me this plant when she moved.” Healing, Memories, and gardens naturally go together. When the life of something loved is celebrated with beauty, as with a memorial garden, it creates a lasting, comforting impression in a child’s mind.

Bereavement counselors know that recognizing and memorializing a loved one, person or pet, is very important in a healthy grieving process. It is especially important for children who are suffering to have a hand in the planning of a memorial garden. It gives them a sense of purpose in a situation that seems to have no reason, and they sometimes have ideas for striking creations our adult minds would never have envisioned. A friend’s 7 year-old daughter lost her cat “Boomer” to an accident. I suggested a memorial garden and tried to offer some options. “You could have certain colors, or flowers with cat names, or a rock with your cat’s name, or...”

“I want a black and white garden!” The little girl cried out. “I want a garden that is black and white like Boomer!”

Her mother glared at me as friends sometimes do when you have started trouble. “There really aren’t true black flowers, honey,” she said. “Let’s think of something else.”

“But there is black mulch, and black and white crushed stone, and black or white statuary or memorial stones,” I suggested. The family and I discussed possibilities, and they ended up burying Boomer in a spot the little girl could see from her window, and near where she played. The garden was a raised bed over the burial site, and was truly a black and white garden. They used white crushed stone in a five inch perimeter around the circle, and black crushed stone for the center, so it was mostly black. The center was a mass of tall white phlox, and other, shorter white flowers surrounded it, including white creeping phlox. They set a white, bonded marble sculpture of a cat among the blooms. It matched the home’s more modern appearance, and the little girl had done something positive with her feelings of sadness. Every time I visit in summertime, she takes me by the hand to “Boomer’s Garden”.

There is no right and wrong to how you design a pet memorial garden anymore than there are right and wrong ways to design any garden. I know some people who don’t want any headstones on their property, so they choose some kind of statuary, stepping stone, or even a river rock with their pet’s name engraved on it. Some people have elaborate areas, and others prefer something simple and symbolic, like the family I know who planted a special water lily in the pond for their beta fish who had passed on. Sometimes it is a family’s decision to search the internet or go to a store to buy memorials or plants for the creation, and sometimes parents and children will come up with a homemade solution and divide and transplant things they already have growing. The important thing is the process, and having the lasting and lovely image. The time will be a powerful investment in how your child works through future losses.

Tanya Sousa is a Guidance Counselor in Vermont, working with children ages 5-14 and their families. She and her husband also own and operate “Nature’s Expressions” Pet Memorials and Garden Accessories.

Home | Feature Stories | Vet's Voice | Bird Beat | Fe-Lines | Aunt Debe | Agility | Miss Behavior
Dogs-The Right Stuff | Animal Welfare | Favorite Links | Contact Us

© Copyright 2004 OK PetGazette and Barking Mutt Animal Welfare Society.
No part of this Web site may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior written permission.