We reached out to Paul Koudounaris and asked him to share the inspiration behind exploring the historical evolution of pet memorialization and cemeteries for his book. The writer responded: “I've previously written three books about death and one about cats, so this is pretty much right at the intersection of my main interests. There's something about pet cemeteries that particularly moves me. There's no standard way of saying goodbye to a pet.”
The book’s author reflected on how the experience of losing a pet differs significantly from saying a final goodbye to a human: “When a person dies there are a series of understood gestures, ritualized behaviors, and a standard rhetoric to govern the way we say goodbye and start to seek closure, but that doesn't exist with pets. Everyone is pretty much on their own, which can make the grief extremely painful, but it also makes the expression of mourning very personal, direct, honest, and earnest. It creates a feeling of intimacy with animal graves. All of that has a lot to do with why I was drawn to research and write about them.”
We were curious about how Koudounaris uncovered the personal stories of those who have memorialized their pets and what moved him the most in the process. The writer told us: “All the stories moved me, Honestly. It's part of the reason this book was so difficult to work on, every day with every story I was placing myself in the middle of someone's grief.”
“Of course, some moved me more than others. The story of Nightlife, a dog in New Jersey who ran around with the hip nightclub crowd, and when he died the city effectively shut down for his funeral procession, people really loved this dog, it was a communal mourning. Or Shep, a dog who spent the latter part of his life waiting for his dead owner in a Montana train station. No one even knew the man's name, it was the dog who remembered someone the rest of humanity had forgotten. But how did I uncover some of these stories? No short cuts, just time and a lot of work. I worked on this for over a decade.”
The writer addressed our question about why a cultural taboo surrounding pet mourning persists, even in light of the deep emotional bonds people form with their pets: “That's such a great and complex question. The simple answer is speciesism, this belief that humans are and must be number one, the pinnacle of creation, and everything is lesser. Blaming it on speciesism isn't wrong, but there's more to it. Why do we insist on thinking that way? We share the world with these creatures equally, yet why do we see it all as ours and deny them so much? For sure some of it in Western culture has to do with our spiritual history. The idea we are created in God's image, therefore we are justifiably number one and it would be wrong to mourn them the way we would a human. In truth that's bad theology, it oversimplifies a lot. In the original wording of Genesis, the same life force is breathed into both humans and animals, we changed the wording later so people got a soul, animals just got the breath of life, but that's not the original idea. As I said, complicated. There's something about the nature of humanity, we demand to be considered better than them.”
Next, we were interested in Paul’s perspective on the role of pet cemeteries and memorials in helping people process their grief. We learned that: “That's also a great question, the issue of whether the graves themselves or the memorials help the grieving process. I think they do. I spent a year as a volunteer grief counselor for people whose animals had passed, and I always advised people to try to come up with some kind of ritual or ceremony to help start the healing process. I had previously visited Buddhist temples that hold funerary rituals for pets. I also got to sit in on a Hindu funeral for a dog, it was very moving. I think having some kind of ritual or ceremony helps us feel like we're actively and effectively paying respects. But the graves and memorials can help in that way too. A memorial can become something like a relic, and a focus for our devotion. The grave can serve as morning site and again help us focus our grief.”
Lastly, we asked Paul Koudounaris what he hopes his readers take away from 'Faithful Unto Death' regarding the importance of honoring the lives and deaths of animal companions. He kindly responded: “There's a subtext to the book. On the surface it appears as a history book. A history book in theory is supposed to be neutral. Well, that's a fiction, of course, the telling of history is always part of some agenda or another. In my case it's pretty obvious to a careful reader, I connect giving animals a good death, with dignity, to the greater struggle for animal rights, to truly respect them as members of the global society. But that's not really subtext, that's not what I'm referring to by using that term. I didn't want to write a book on mourning, but I wanted to write a book that in telling its stories might help or guide people on how they want to mourn or pay respects. The subtext is that the feeling of grief on a pet's passing is universal, you're not alone in feeling that, and my hope is that by looking at all these examples and reading the stories, it might help you understand better what you're feeling, and maybe inspire an idea on how you want to pay tribute.”
