When I was a child I lived on a farm and every year we kept a pig for our own consumption. They were slaughtered and butchered on the farm, very swiftly and efficiently by the local butcher. I watched it happen. I also saw my dad wring the necks of chooks. It never occurred to me to believe these animals were going to some happy land over a rainbow bridge. they were dead; d e a d and the only place they were going was into the oven or the cooking pot.
When I was 10 my puppy got run over, he suffered a badly broken leg and probable internal injuries. Hewas in a lot of pain and there was no possible way my parents could afford expensive veterinary treatment. That night after I'd gone to bed my dad put a rifle to his head and shot him. My mother came upstairs and told me- she just said dad had put him out of his pain. She didn't waffle on about rainbow bridges, she just told me how sorry she was, that she knew how much I was hurting and held me in her arms while I cried. I grieved for that little pup for a long time and nobody told me I shouldn't or tried to cheer me up with fantasies, but eventually I came to terms with the loss and moved on.
As a result of that experience I learnt a lot about grief and my ability to cope with it - and it's just as well I did, because 25 years later I had to sit helplessly on a Flying Doctor plane and watch my two year old son die. Those previous encounters with death didn't lessen my grief, but they sure as hell taught me how to cope with it.
