For many, a pet’s death is like losing a beloved family member. That was certainly the case for us.
My cat Reis died in April. When a tumor in his mouth meant he could no longer eat or drink, we made the hard choice to euthanize him.
Our decision to hold a Jewish funeral for our cat did not surprise anyone who knew us. We gave eulogies, recited prayers, and practiced the Jewish tradition of shoveling dirt into his grave as a last act of honoring the dead.
We laid him to rest at Noah’s Ark in Falls Church, one of the few pet cemeteries in the area. Friends, family, and even a rabbi helped us say goodbye to Reis.
And, as I learned, we weren’t alone in honoring a furry friend in this way.
Jerry Lin cried nearly every day for weeks following the death of his black-and-white greyhound Baba in March.
“I don’t think a lot of people understand that losing a pet is like losing family,” Lin says on a bright June morning as we walk together to Baba’s grave. “I felt like a piece of my heart was ripped away from me.”
Lin buried Baba at Congressional Cemetery’s Kingdom of Animals in Southeast D.C., the only active pet cemetery in the District. He held a small funeral service for him, at which family, friends, and Baba’s dog walker came out to pay their respects.
Three months later, the photos from the funeral are still there at Baba’s final resting place, along with his favorite tennis ball. Lin says it brings him solace knowing Baba is right down the street from him, where he can visit anytime he wants, and in a cemetery known for allowing dogs to be walked off-leash.
“Finding a space like this kind of made me feel some comfort knowing that he’s here,” Lin says. He’s happy.”
A few feet away from Baba is Bradley Superstar, whose bone-shaped gravestone reads, “No longer by my side, but forever in my heart.” Bradley was a 30-pound Westie who lived a long, loving life as Brea Ellis’s companion.
Bradley came into Ellis’s life at a particularly tough time. She was dealing with a move to a new city, a breakup, and the recent death of her father. Her landlord recommended she get a dog.
“When I got him, I had a couple of losses back to back. Sometimes that [puts] you in the type of depression where you just don’t get off the couch,” Ellis says. “So, it was perfect timing to get a dog because you have to take them outside. You have to take them on a walk; you have to potty train them. It gives your mind something to do. And… that’s how I met all of my neighbors.”
Early on, however, Bradley’s boundless puppy energy and doggie mishaps were almost too much for her. There was the one time she had fallen asleep on a flight, only to be woken up by an angry flight attendant pointing at her dog running down the aisle.
“He was in a bag under the seat in front of me, and it had like a little leash attached to his collar. And he had chewed through it, gotten out, and he was running down the aisle with a bag, like, flapping behind him, like basically storming the cockpit,” Ellis says, laughing. “I was like, ‘We are going to get on the no-fly list.'”
Bradley and Ellis were best buds for nearly 15 years. He was there on her 30th and 40th birthdays, by her side in good times and bad. So, when it was Bradley’s time to go, she had to give him a proper send-off. She chose Congressional Cemetery’s Kingdom of Animals because she used to walk Bradley there, even take him off leash and let him run around.
Ellis also held a funeral for her dog. Friends and family came, bringing flowers and memories of the adorable, energetic Westie. Ellis read an obituary. Photos from the funeral nearly two years ago are still at the grave.
“I think it would make me more sad to have him in my house and look at the urn every day. But it makes me very happy to have him here and dogs coming by,” Ellis says. “I would rather visit him in this place where we were both happy, you know?”
Jessica Kwerel is a Glover Park-based licensed therapist specializing in pet loss support. She says a pet is one of the most stable relationships a human can have, yet society doesn’t always recognize the grief that can come with the death of an animal companion. She describes this disconnect as “disenfranchised grief.”
“Animals are just pure, unconditional, consistent, steady love. So when it’s gone suddenly, we’re going to have these tremendous, tremendous grief experiences,” Kwerel says. “I say the brain doesn’t differentiate between skin and fur.”
Kwerel notes that rituals around death, like burials and funerals, help humans grieve the loss.
It’s also nothing new. People’s emotional attachment to animals and the desire to honor them in death dates back centuries. Archeologists have found pet remains buried in ancient cemeteries in Egypt, Siberia, and Israel.
Lily Buerkle is the funeral director for Congressional Cemetery where she helps plan both human and pet funerals. Since the Kingdom of Animals opened in 2019, the cemetery has buried about 40 pets.
Buerkle says in her experience, pet ceremonies hit a bit differently than human funerals.
“People let themselves feel their emotions more purely when they are burying their pet because there’s no complicated relationship there,” Buerkle says. “I find people are just really, like, present and raw for their pet ceremonies in a way that sometimes with people ceremonies, there’s just more to coordinate. And with the pets, it’s just pure love.”
There are some restrictions at Congressional Cemetery’s Kingdom of Animals. The cemetery requires cremation for all pets. And Buerkle says it’s against D.C. law for humans and their pets to be buried in the same grave.
It’s also pricey; individual in-ground graves at Kingdom of Animals start at $1600 and go up. Still, for some, it’s a price they’re willing pay to memorialize a loved one and provide closure.
In our region, people have been burying pets in local cemeteries for at least a century.
Aspin Hill Memorial Park in Montgomery County is one of the country’s oldest pet cemeteries. Its first internment dates back to the 1920s. Over 55,000 pets have been buried here, and some well-known names are among them. There are dogs owned by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and other national figures, as well as a dog named Rags celebrated as a World War I hero. There are also a few dozen people buried here, and several monkeys. However, despite the rumors, “Petey,” the famous dog from the early Our Gang film series and later the Little Rascals television show, is not buried at the cemetery.
On a summer morning, I join James Nolan of the Montgomery County Humane Society for a tour of Aspin Hill. We dodge and dart between markers inscribed with pets’ names,including Andy, Mr. Poo-Bah, Winky, and Duke. We see Rags’ grave, adorned with flowers.
The Humane Society owns and manages the eight-acre cemetery, which is not taking any new burials. The organization is fundraising to rebuild the older buildings on the site and move the Humane Society’s headquarters there. They hope to break ground early next year, Nolan says. The plan is also to renovate the eight-acre cemetery, making it more accessible to visitors.
Local dog breeders Richard and Bertha Birney founded the cemetery in 1920, burying their own dogs there before opening it up to the public.
“It was a big subject of amusement in the Washington press in the 1920s,” Nolan says. “They were joking that this is the resting place for pampered pooches.” He considers himself the cemetery’s historian and helps with keeping 90 years of burial records.
We walk past graves with inscriptions like “Devoted pal,” “I will always love you,” and “Their love made every day a poem.”
“It’s really moving to see some of the epitaphs that people put on the stones. They really love their pets,” Nolan says.
We are deep among dog graves when Nolan suddenly stops and bends over. He reads a fading epitaph aloud.
“Staef? Is that an ‘e’? Yeah, he died June 1925. World war hero. That’s a new discovery for me, folks,” Nolan says, taking a step back. “He deserves a flag.”
Aspin Hill Memorial Park is evidence of our region’s devotion to animals through the decades. There’s Mike, a golden retriever who died in 1959; Baby Girl, a 17-year-old cat who crossed the rainbow bridge in 1963; and Pee-Wee, a cockatoo who died in 1993.
“[We’ve] had people who buried their pets here when they were kids coming back 50, 60 years later and they’ll say ‘Oh, my dog is buried over here,”says Nolan. “And we’ll find it.”
A few weeks after we buried our cat Reis, we visited him at the pet cemetery in Falls Church. The sun was out, birds were chirping in the trees, and grass was growing on the grave.
Sitting there, I smiled at all the other best friends around us. I knew Reis was happy among the trees and next to Sly Cano, another family’s well-loved cat.