Goodbye Pet & See You in Heaven E-Book

Bel Mooney

• Herausgeber: The Robson Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

When her beloved small dog died, Bel Mooney was astonished at the depth of her ongoing sorrow. Sharing her loss online and in a newspaper article brought a deluge of responses, spurring Bel to explore these feelings further. Why do humans mourn pets? Can animals themselves grieve - and do they have souls? In Goodbye, Pet & See You in Heaven, Bel sets off on an emotional journey to learn more about pet bereavement. She is astounded by inexplicable 'signs' of her dog's spirit, watches Bonnie's ashes being turned into glass, talks to experts and discusses the mysterious enduring energy of love. She discovers why Ancient Egyptians mummified animals and what different faiths, myths, writers and scientists have to say about animals and the afterlife. She also looks back over her own life and reflects on lessons learned from companion animals - and from wildlife too. As informative as it is deeply moving, Goodbye, Pet is an intensely personal, uplifting look at the love we share with pets, both in life and afterwards. Enriched by heartfelt stories and inspirational words, it is a book to be treasured by anyone who has ever loved an animal.

Leseprobe

GOODBYE, PET & SEE YOU IN HEAVEN

A Memoir of Animals, Love and Loss

BEL MOONEY

For Robin

As the traveller who has lost his way throws his reins on his horse’s neck and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world. For if … we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature … and metamorphosis is possible.

FROM ‘THE POET’ BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Do you remember when we met? That’s the day I knew you were my pet. I wanna tell youHow much I love you.

FROM ‘SEA OF LOVE’ BY PHIL PHILLIPS AND GEORGE KOURY

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATIONEPIGRAPHCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENACKNOWLEDGEMENTSALSO BY BEL MOONEYCOPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

She might have had months left of her dog-years, but to be who? She’d grown light as a nestand spent the whole day under her long earslistening to the bad radio in her breast.

FROM ‘MERCIES’ BY DON PATERSON (B. 1963)

IF YOU ARE wise, you prepare for a long time. After about nine years not a day passed without the awareness chiming, like the sound of a small brass bell in an Eastern temple.

Ping … just there, at the edge of the imagination.

The tiny alarm that warns, ‘It is coming…’

But certainly not a passing bell… not yet.

Ping … just a reminder that the lifespan of a dog or a cat is very short and therefore you must prepare for its end. The more you love your pet, the more you must make ready, like taking out an insurance policy. Our beloved Maltese dog, Bonnie, would soon die. This is the law of the universe.

So I would make my husband consider where we might bury her when the time came, even though this was an act of cruelty to a man who cannot bear harsh realities. His face would shut down; if he were a child he would have stuck his fingers in his ears. But I was relentless:

A grave in the walled garden?

No, he said, it would become waterlogged in winter, with the river so near, and ‘I wouldn’t want her to be cold.’

A grave by the wooden bench at the top of the garden, where we enjoy the last evening sunlight?

Maybe. ‘She’d be with us while we have an evening drink.’

A grave near our Buddhist statue of Kwan Yin, in her gazebo?

Possibly, because then (I thought) Bonnie would be looked after by the goddess of compassion.