Death of Pet Brings Life to Children's Religion

Last year, after a three-month battle with lymphoma complete with many visits to the vet and a number of desperate attempts to force-feed large pills, our family sadly accepted the fate of letting go of our beloved pet for many years. She was a cat named Cheeta.

Cheeta had been around longer than my oldest child, so my kids had no memory of a time before her. As a result, this not only saddened them as any pet's death would but it even took on a rather traumatizing effect.

We were homechurching at the time, and talking about Cheeta's passing became an invaluable tool in that effort. "Heaven" took on a more prominent and pertinent meaning to them. Now it was more than a place where God, Jesus, angels and saints 'hung out'. It was the place where our Cheeta had gone to.

In fact, we collected up all our pictures of Cheeta and displayed them onto a beautiful framed poster of an artist's rendition of what Heaven looked like. This was our visual focal point as we homechurched.

Since we had wanted to have Cheeta's body buried on our property, we had her cremated (she had died in late winter when the ground was still frozen). After the spring thaw, we held a funeral for her as we buried her in "the bird sanctuary" we have on our property where her burial site had a perfect view of the birds she so loved to watch in life. The children cried and put alongside her box adorning pictures and flowers they had picked. It was a short mass complete with prayers. We then buried and marked the grave.

We continued for a long time afterwards to homechurch using that artwork with Cheeta's pictures attached to it. I cannot emphasize enough the lasting impression this had on my children in their sense of connection to God. We managed to take a very depressing time in our lives and turn it into something so positive and constructive in our faith.