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 Cute, fuzzy, four-legged kids. Sometimes the bond we have with our animals is even stronger than that of our family members, because we become attached in a way that has a different meaning. All they want to do is receive our affection.
When I was going into second grade, we moved from a farm where we had all sorts of animals, and I missed not having all the personalities around me. I wanted my own animal, so I got a white kitty that I named Whiskers. I have many pictures of myself and that cat in a variety of situations because no matter where I went, Whiskers was there too.
A few years later, when we had both grown and become more independent, Whiskers would disappear on occasion. My father explained to me how the male species of animals survived by seeking out new mates and told me that I would see less of Whiskers as he set out on his adventures. But he typically would be on the doorstep in the morning, waiting for us to go down to the school bus.
And then came the day when Whiskers did not come home at all. Two days went by, and I really started to worry about my kitty. My worry shortly turned into horror when we went down our road and made the turn to go up behind our house and discovered that he had been hit by a car.
One of the saddest days of my life, as a youngster, was upon me and I didn’t know what to do. We gathered up Whiskers and put him on a blanket in the back seat of the car and took him home.
Not knowing what was going to happen next, I followed my father out to the barn and watched him get a shovel. As we walked back to the house, he explained that we were going to bury Whiskers in the backyard under the maple tree where he liked to shade himself.
As we were burying him, I never felt so alone. Thinking that I should have been able to stop him from getting hit by the car, I also felt very guilty. I cried for days about not having him to hold and longed to feel his soft coat of snow-white fur and see his intense green eyes looking at me the way they used to. It was the first time I lost something so precious.
All of these emotions over an animal! I never expected to be so distraught over the death of a cat, but even now, I still think about him and hold a special place in my heart for his memory.
Because I grew up in and around funeral homes, I have always been exposed to the facts of death. And in keeping with tradition, I represent the sixth generation of Beinhauers to be a funeral director. You may think that I would be used to handling the issues of grief and loss, but I still deal with those feelings more than you know.
To be continued…… •
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