Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet

poems. I read aloud to Amy a few lines written by the poet Kabir: We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves birds and animals and the ants— perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in your mother’s womb …

We never feel grief when we lose something that we have allowed to be free, that we have never attempted to possess. Grief is a sign that I made my happiness depend on this thing or person, at least to some extent. We’re so accustomed to hear the opposite of this that what I say sounds inhuman, doesn’t it?

This particular night, he was also bummed out by the fact that his cat had died, finished off by a mouse that was in the process of being finished off by some D-Con poison. It was heartrending to hear him talk of the cat as someone with whom he could “communicate” in a building full of people who did not talk to one another. He added that the cat s