Giving a Pet Memorial Gift? Timing is everything!
Supporting a friend through grief
The grief that your friend or other loved one will be feeling over the loss of their pet will be intense, and perhaps the best gift you can give them is to be there for them, supporting them with patience, with space, with an embrace, and with an ear out for any hints they might give regarding their needs. The grief over pet loss can be hard to express, and it can come over us in different ways, surprising us, shocking us, overwhelming us, so don’t be surprised if the hints your friend gives you are hard to read, but that, of course, is where your patience will come in, that and your listening skills. Your listening skills, and your powers of observation generally, will be great guides toward the perfect gift to give your friend, because they will lend you, amongst other super-powers, a great sense of timing, and timing, when giving a pet memorial gift, is everything.
Thinking about giving a Pet Memorial Gift?
If your friend is facing the loss of their pet, either from old age or from an illness, then all kinds of options are open to you as to what to give. Perhaps your friend does not have a big budget, and you do? Well then picking up the tab for that unaffordable pot of ashes might make for the most welcome gift, along with a beautiful urn. Other cherished keepsakes that can be created when we’ve been forewarned of the loss of a pet can include having cremation ashes turned into diamonds; clipping some fur from the beloved pet to go inside a locket with a photo; or having paw prints taken so that they can be included alongside the deceased pet’s photograph in a framed artwork. A lovely gift to give someone facing the loss of their pet is a session with a pet photographer, and then, once their pet has passed on, they – or you – can get personalised pet memorial gifts created out of their favourite photograph/s. We’ll return to this last idea, namely of getting a memorial created out of a photo, momentarily.
Choosing the perfect Custom Pet Memorial Gift
When faced with the death of a pet, our whole being focuses on extending our little (or big) darling’s life for as happily and as long as possible. If your friend is in such a situation, then asking them to think ahead to the kind of memorial they might like to have made upon their pet’s passing may well be to ask far too much of them. In that case, the best time to give that pet memorial gift will be after their pet has left our world, but when should that be, and what should be given? My answer to that is that the time of the giving determines the nature of the gift, and when I talk about timing here, the measure is not the number of days that have passed since the pet died, but where your friend is at in terms of their grief. If it’s very early days, then something simple, like a personalised memorial stone for them to place somewhere special in the garden with their pet’s ashes, might be nice, or maybe even, for a girl or woman perhaps, a piece of commemorative jewellery, like a pendant or charm in the form of their lost pet.
Ideally, in the earliest days, you don’t want to give the bereaved the kind of gift that they have to think about, or do work for, in any way, such as by having to supply photos or birth and death dates.
Once a little time has passed, and your friend is not so likely to find doing stuff around the death of their pet so difficult, then by all means, ask for those photos! Armed with your friend’s favourite photos of their pet, you can get personalised blankets made, throw pillows, coffee cups, and more.
Indeed, you can get the kind of custom pet memorial gifts that I create made to honour their pet. I interview the bereaved for their memories of their pet, and write up a lovely little eulogy, which, with either a watercolour or photo of the pet alongside, I present as a framed artwork. If that last idea inspires you, then the time to give the gift is perhaps at a little later stage in your friend’s grief, when their tears have abated and doing something like talking about all the reasons why they loved their pet so much will feel not like an impossible chore but a journey of sweet, happy nostalgia.