November 30th, 1999
When It’s Time to Say Goodbye to Your Beloved Parrot
There can be nothing more joyful than bringing your new baby parrot home and beginning a life together. Conversely there can be nothing more deeply inconsolable than to face the inevitable issue of death and dying with our animal family members. We love them and we have to let them go when it’s time for them to transition into the next reality, the next stage of the wheel of life.
People have a deep-seated fear of death, something that is completely foreign to animals as they view life and death as one continuous process. They really have no attachment to their bodies and examples of animals missing limbs and then carrying on within a few minutes as if nothing was different with their bodies mystifies human beings. How do they move past difficulties such as pain and suffering without holding onto trauma? How are they able to forgive someone who has wronged them? Why are we not? The answers to these questions lie in the difference in how animals view the world.
Animals do not have an ego or the part of the mind that gets attached to outcomes, needs to be right, has to control, fights for attention and gets in the way of loving others and experiencing connection with life. Animals experience the world as being connected and being able to live in the NOW. They understand it as it is without having to make it different or better. It is this lack of having an ego that makes us want to be around animals, to be experienced as we truly are and feel accepted with all our faults and weaknesses, bad hair days and empty bank accounts. Animals make us feel loved and appreciated in a way we seldom experience with our own kind. Animals, in this way, give us a gift of love.
When we are faced with a very sick bird and we know that what we can do might not save her life we must surrender to the fact that we must give up control. We feel helpless. This is a sobering moment. We must face the Creator. Knowing that animals view death often as a welcoming moment especially if they have suffered greatly in their bodies can be a great relief for humans. Allowing our animals to die is the greatest gift we can give them. A human who is terrified of the dying process will interfere with an animal’s wishes to leave his body.
Facing the death of our parrots is a difficult role for most people. Knowing your animal's specific wishes surrounding their death can bring incredible comfort to you at a time that is full of confusion and grief. Animal communication can help you to fully understand your animal’s wishes and give you a sense of closure by preventing negative assumptions that generate long lasting guilt.