If we woke up someday and our pet chinchilla Qyx was gone, we’d know it was The Rapture. That was a joke in our family. But it wasn’t The Rapture that took Qyx– it was a buildup of gas, and she died during an extended stay at a veterinary clinic.
Somewhere between a goldfish and a dog is a chinchilla. A goldfish can be buried in the yard without a permanent memorial, and a dog or cat is too big for that. We wanted to bury Qyx in our yard with dignity and grace, as a beloved member of our family.
The question often arises about the spiritual status of animals. A common answer is that reincarnation explains the role of all life forms, human and non-human. If that’s the case, I’m fine with that, because if it is, God has decreed that it be so. I’m not threatened by the possibility that Christianity does not have all of the most correct answers. A “Tales Of The Hasidim” story relates that a wedding party was short one person, so they enlisted a poor passer-by. “So be it,” he said. After replying to every request with that answer, someone asked him why. He quoted the Scripture, “Blessed are the people with whom it is so.”
Do animals have souls? A Zen story has someone asking, “Does a dog have a Buddha nature?” In reply, the Zen Master said, “Mu!”
Asking a Catholic to explain a Zen concept is the same as asking a Zen adherent to explain a Catholic concept. I’ll simply say, hoping I’m not too far off the mark, that the Master was telling the student that there was an nswer to the question the student should have asked, but didn’t, and if he didn’t know the right question, he couldn’t tell him the question, or the answer, but, regardless, truth prevails.
Maybe the answer is that we share our souls with animals. Not literally, not metaphysically– simply to say, when a beloved pet dies, a part of us dies, too.
I dug a deep hole in our backyard in front of our big statue of Our Lady Of Guadalupe. (I found it by a Dumpster at our old condominium.) I sprinkled holy water in the hole, lit a candle in the lantern above Our Lady, and lit three long sticks of Vietnamese incense.
Aimee came outside after she put George to bed. We took Qyx out of the box she was in, out of the plastic bag she was in. It was our Qyx all right, eyes closed forever, our sweet, pure, innocent Qyx. I sprinkled holy water on her. We stroked and kissed her, shedding many tears. I played the song “Afterglow,” by Genesis, from “WInd & Wuthering.” After the song, I read the 4th day of creation from the book of Genesis, a passage from Ecclesiastes (“A time to mourn,” etc.) and the account of The Rapture from First Thessalonians. We said our final farewells, wrapped her up in a little red blanket, and lowered her into the ground. We sprinkled more holy water into the hole, and as we gently filled the hole, played two more songs from WInd & Wuthering: “Unquiet Slumbers For The Sleepers” and “In That Quiet Earth.”
Elaborate, yes, but befitting the love we have for our beloved companion of the last almost five years, and for those we love, nothing is too extravagant.
All life has dignity and honor as part of God’s creation, and all beings have dignity and honor. As Christians, we do well to remember that all life is dear to God, and we do well to prayerfully place our pets in His Hands, Who is aware when even a sparrow falls to the Earth. Who knows what might come of our prayers after God takes them into consideration? All things are possible.