The Bethline is open!

Where do our pets go when they have to leave us? Let's get into it...

Hello friends! We are back this week with another episode (post? I dunno what the hell we refer to this as, ok?) of Bethline, my monthly advice column here on Oversharing. If you have a question for me, feel free to drop it here. Questions are always 100% anonymous, so don’t be scared to dig deep into your soul and ask me anything. Here at Oversharing we do not judge, and we definitely do not undershare…

This week’s question…

I would love for you to maybe talk a bit about how you’ve dealt with grief over the death of Snacks. Since losing my canine best friend in 2023 I’ve struggled with moving forward. I’m not a Heaven & Hell believer, so the concept of the “Rainbow Bridge” is hard for me to reconcile. Recently, I’ve tried to move my grief forward by considering that perhaps, in some form or fashion, there’s more to our existence than just physical life and death. Not spiritual, necessarily, but perhaps there’s…something? And really, who the hell knows what’s next?

Dear Who The Hell Knows What’s Next,

First off, I am so sorry about the loss of your special BFF pup. It doesn’t matter if it was a year ago, or twenty years ago - pet loss is so specifically painful and the grief stays with you. I think part of why losing a pet is so extremely hard is because animals are so innocent. Like babies, they are just living in this world “no thoughts, just vibes” style. They just want to make you smile and laugh and sit next to you on the couch. The idea of such a pure being feeling pain on any level is too hard to grasp. As grown adult humans, we know how fucked the world is, how much suffering there is, and how unfair death can feel - but our pets just live to get treats and keep us company, they have no idea what is going on in the world, and therefore, they deserve to live an infinite life of no pain. Also, they love us unconditionally. They have no idea how flawed we are, they don’t judge our failures, or roll their eyes at our idiosyncrasies - they simply love us for who we are. Our relationships with our pets are some of the easiest relationships in life too, aside from feeding them, walking them, cleaning up after them, and spending a fortune on them at the vet - there is nothing required of us other than love. When they come into our lives, of course, we know on a rational level that one day they will have to leave them, but their memory and the effect they have on us goes absolutely nowhere. There is a permanent stain left on our hearts from these loyal, lovable little goofballs, and that makes the idea of losing them so difficult to grasp.

When I had to make the heartbreaking decision to put Snacks down in February of 2022, I really did not know how I would be able to go on. The idea of never coming home to see his fluffy, matted orange body on my couch again was enough to throw me down a rabbit hole of what’s the point in going on? Snacks had been my partner in life, my son, and my band mascot for 14 years. FOURTEEN YEARS of my life spent with him at my side. He saw everything. Every season. Every change. He was there for some of the highest highs and lowest lows (my highs are high, my lows are low, etc.) Snacks came into my life right around the time Best Coast was starting, and while everything in my life was exploding, both good and bad, he was right there curled up in my lap purring away. Sometimes I wonder why I made such a specific choice to make him such a huge part of the Best Coast aesthetic, I honestly didn’t even like cats that much, but I think unconsciously I knew this little creature was going to be a guardian angel for me and I needed him by my side throughout the journey to consistently remind me that I was loved and protected. I’ve talked about it many times, but the early days of Best Coast were very difficult for me. I was only twenty-two when the band started, and navigating the public’s opinion of me was a daily challenge I brushed up against. I used to stay up all night sometimes obsessing over what people were saying about me on the internet, and though it ruined me in so many ways, having Snacks right there next to me, physically on the couch, and also in so many photos being used in press and online, I felt some level of sanity.

Bratty B and her protector Snacks The Cat

Snacks got really sick towards the end of 2020 and it did not seem like he was going to live much longer. I mourned the loss of him almost every single day. I would bury my face in his long hair and cry (and also sneeze uncontrollably because omg that hair was something else!), thinking about losing him. I did everything in my power to keep him well enough to stick around as long as he was able to, and I was able to keep him with me for about a year and a half longer than anyone, myself included, had expected. I used to talk to him all the time and tell him you just let me know when you’re ready buddy, ok? Everyone around me who had been through the painful process of putting their pet down told me “you’ll just know” and I didn’t understand what that meant. How the fuck am I going to just know that it’s time to say goodbye forever to my pet who I NEVER want to say goodbye to? Well, turns out, they were right. I did know. And he let me know. I knew that cat and his personality and behaviors like the back of my hand, and in his final days, I knew he was slipping away and that he didn’t want to be here anymore. He was tired of fighting, and he stayed by my side for as long as he possibly could. Fourteen years is a long time, though not long enough. The morning that I put him down, I took him outside into the backyard and let him flop around in the sunshine, one of his favorite activities, and I sat there accepting that I would never physically see him roll around in a sunspot on the concrete in my backyard ever again. It was truly one of the hardest moments of my life thus far. I choke up just thinking about it.

My sunny little boy.

When I took him to the vet that day, he was at such peace, it was almost as if he knew exactly what was happening, and he was just happy to be embarking on his big sleep. I know he didn’t want to leave me or this world behind, but he didn’t have it in him to keep fighting. And by way of some weird, inexplainable, cat to woman connection - I could hear him saying “it’s all going to be ok” to me in those final moments. As I watched him take his final breaths, wrapped in a Batman blanket in the sterile, LED-lit vet’s office, I felt an entire chapter of my life coming to a close. I knew that all the lazy, crazy, baby, “I wish my cat could talk” moments were going to have a whole new significance to me and that his presence in my life would take on a new form. I didn’t know how or what it would look like, but I knew I loved that fucking cat so much that there was no way in hell I was ever going to simply just put his ashes on a shelf and move on. He’d be a part of me forever. There was a sincere soul connection between the two of us, E.T. and Elliot if you will. I knew that there was just no way a love and bond that strong could disappear into thin air. There had to be something else.

When I shared the news with the public that Snacks had passed away, the influx of love and support was astounding. I know that not everyone has a famous pet, so it’s a unique experience to be grieving your beloved with the public - but knowing that Snacks had touched all of these random strangers’ lives enough that they too were crying and mourning - it changed something within me. It made the grief easier to swallow in a way. I didn’t feel so alone in having to say goodbye, even though I was the one who had to be there in the room literally saying it. The invisible, indescribable connection to life and love that Snacks embodied as a fucking cat was the very thing that made me believe in … something … after life. I still don’t know what I believe in, but I know I believe in something. I have never received so much love and support in my life, and so much of it came from people I’ve never even met before. People whose names I don’t know, people who might have very different values than me in life, people I would not recognize if I were walking down the street. His very existence connected me to all of these people. A mutual love and respect and appreciation for his life. It was so moving, and I held onto it for as long as I possibly could. I still go back sometimes and read the comments on the post announcing his passing, and I feel reconnected to him, and to something bigger, all over again.

The moment he became a star!

Now, I understand that losing your dog was not at all like me losing Snacks. For one, your relationship with your pup was yours. It may mirror mine in that we loved them so much, but only you know the connection you two had and how it made your life better. Your dog probably was also never on the cover of an indie rock album (or maybe they were!) - but your dog had unconditional love from you and likely all the other people in your life. Your dog brought a smile to a random someone’s face as you walked by them on the street. Your dog also representes something bigger in this life than just … a pet. A physical representation of what love looks like. Like I said, these creatures mean so much to us because of their innocence and ability to love us, no matter what kind of shitty person we may be! Of course, I am not saying you are a shitty person, but I think if even Donald Trump himself had a pet, they would love him unconditionally and think he was the greatest, most loving, magical person in the world. That is how little pets care about who we actually are as people. They just love us. Side note, but like, isn’t it also telling what kind of person Trump is that he doesn’t have any pets? Anyway, sorry, that’s not the point here …

Whenever you start to miss your dog, I would encourage you to reflect on the love and joy they brought not only to you, but to the people around you. Your dog’s magical ability to bring joy and love into a world where, let’s be honest, it can be hard to find love and joy, is a superpower, and that right there - is, to me, the only proof you need that they will stick around you forever. A love that big, that deep, that inexplainable - it can’t possibly go away. It doesn’t fade, it doesn’t waver. It just becomes something new. A reminder to be present. A reminder that love actually exists. A reminder that something in this world can love you unconditionally and never hurt or betray you. There are lessons that come with owning a pet, not just lessons in responsibility and caretaking, but philosophical lessons about the meaning of life. Sometimes I will remember some moment of my life that I shared with Snacks, so vividly, that I feel like I’m right back in it. Whenever that happens to me, particularly when the memory or feeling floods in so quickly and unexpectedly, it almost takes my breath away, I personally choose to believe it means he is near me in some way, shape or form. I choose to believe that he is still sitting in one of those sun spots that he loved so dearly, checking in on me to make sure I am doing ok and not reading mean comments about myself on the internet! I just have to believe it, because the feeling is so strong, the memory is so strong, the love is still so strong, it can’t not be real.

While I was devastated when Snacks died, I also felt so at peace with the idea of death, because I started seeing the beauty and magic in so many mundane things around me. I talk frequently on here about finding magic in the mundane and how, for me, it is a reminder as to why life is worth living. When his physical body left me, I suddenly became a lot more capable of finding reminders of him and his magic all over the place. In the first few weeks after he was gone, I found magic in everything. I’d wake up in the morning and sit out on the back porch and hear the wind chimes ringing in the distance, and I’d spot a single purple flower on the hillside across the street from my house I’d never noticed before. I’d find myself lost at that moment, and I’d connect with Snacks somewhere in that hazy, magical space that is neither here nor there. I’d be cleaning up the house months after he was gone and suddenly find one of his whiskers hidden behind a dresser. I collected everything I found that reminded me of him, including clumps of his hair that I would find stuck in between couch cushions (that guy left behind a lot of memories and a LOT of hair!), and I put them in a little wooden box on top of my dresser. There were no rules about what went in the box either - if it was something that made me feel connected to Snacks, whether it was his literal whiskers or just some rock I found on the beach that made me think of him - it went in the box. There were even a few times I’d be lying in bed and I would hear some distant croak that sounded like his signature, raspy meow, and I would smile and say Hey Snackers! Was there really a phantom meow in my house? Who fucking cares?! The point is, I heard it, and it made me feel connected to him. For that reason alone, it was real.

I started to really think that maybe when we die, or when anyone we love dies, while yes, physically they leave, they also stay with us and just turn in to something new. Grief reveals things to us about ourselves and the world, and if we allow it to really wash over us and try not to run from it - it can become a new teacher, the same way these innocent little fluffy friends were our teachers while they lived life by our side. They come into our lives and by the time they exit them, our lives are exponentially better - for we learned what true, unconditional love can look like. We keep them alive, and they teach us the meaning of life. To love. To be loved.

<3 Soulmates <3

So, while I can’t tell you exactly where your dog or Snacks are residing at the moment, I can tell you that one of their home addresses is inside our hearts. Corny as it fucking is!!!! They’ll never leave that place. Next time you look up at the stars at night, think about the possibility that your pup is just now a part of those stars. There may be no heaven, no hell or no rainbow bridge in your mind, but I do believe your pup is somewhere up there. All around you. Watching you, making sure you remember how loved you are. Next time your heart hurts because you miss your dog, and you wish you could see them again, reach out to someone in your life who loved them too. Share a sweet story or memory. Let that love and memory wrap you up in a beautiful little doggy blanket.

In the time since my buddy left me, my grief has changed shapes. Not a day goes by when I don’t miss him and wish he were here, especially while I prepare to bring a baby into this world and I know he would have been the BEST big brother, but the sadness now is more of an honoring of my little man’s life. I had some of his ashes put into a little gold charm that I wear around my neck, so literally, he is always with me. I’m not sure if there is a way for you to honor your dog that might make you feel physical comfort. You could build a little shrine for them, or have someone paint or draw a portrait - I have many, many paintings and drawings of Snacks all over my house. I look over at them sometimes and smile and feel like he’s still here. I know he’s still here, just in a new way. I loved him too much for him to ever fully go away.

One of my many Snacks portraits, this one by Sasha Spielberg

Anyway, I am crying now and I am hoping that this helped you in some way. Again, I can’t define the *thing* or the *place* or the *whatever the fuck it is* where our pets ended up - but I know wherever they are, they know how loved they were and still are, and they are sending that love back down to us every second of the day.

xoxo, Bethany

Join me next month for another Bethline. Ask your questions here!