On Painting Posthumously
Broadcaster Greg James and his partner Bella Freud recently lost their much-loved Chocolate Brown Labrador, Barney. They spoke publicly about the effect losing him has had on them, and I commend them for doing so. They suffered the usual trolls spouting rubbish, but generally, the outpouring of love and understanding has been heartwarming to witness.
Losing an animal, a pet of any kind, is awful, just plain bloody awful.
I’m in pre-mourning, perhaps you could say. My own Barney (Cocker Spaniel) is now 13 years of age and of course, the inevitable cometh but it’s something that I push away emotionally. I can’t allow my brain too much space on this, as my sister so beautifully says in her big sisterly way - “Don’t go halfway across the bridge to meet trouble babe; we don’t have a problem with Barney until we have a problem”
Do elder sisters get all the savvy genes I wonder.
She is, of course, right.
By speaking publicly about their loss, Greg & Bella have opened wider conversations.
There are no statutory laws that make our workplaces now give us time off for pet loss; it’s called ‘discretionary compassionate leave’ or ‘paid special leave’ and is up to the company, line managers, and our bosses to grant us a little time (or not) to grieve.
I am hearing good things about more understanding in our workplaces; after all, a business is only as good as the people in it, and said people are only delivering sterling work if they feel valued, understood, and good about themselves as well as their work - circle of life stuff, perhaps.
It’s worth saying that I know very little about workplace benefits, having been self-employed for over 30 years.
If I take my past 7 enquiries about making a posthumous painting (that is a painting of a dog that has died) I would say that around 4 have died in the past year, and the other 3 more recently in the last few weeks. These clients are grieving, and I worry sometimes that my responses, although warm and naturally nice (I’m a nice person!) matters in ways that I may never know.
Are there better things to say than others when talking to someone suffering pet bereavement? I’m no more likely to say obvious major blunders such as are you planning on getting another dog soon? or the like, but perhaps I could be offering more by way of support.
Recently, by way of research, I’ve found a course that I’m planning to do as soon as I find some downtime (it may be sooner than I thought, as I can feel a dastardly change-of-season cold coming on - always a good time to digest a course, rather than telly on a loop).
It’s with The Blue Cross and is called ‘An Introduction to Pet Loss Support Skills’. And as I write, I just hopped over and actually booked it. ✔️ Done.
As a guesstimate, I anticipate that I have painted a number of hundreds of dogs over the past ten years, perhaps a third of these have been posthumous. I can only hope that I have done justice to their spirit and the love of the owner commissioning it.
I take my job seriously, painting a dog that is no longer is something I treasure being asked to do, and something I never take for granted, ever.
Much love
Sam x
