By Scott Morgan
Imagine for a moment that you’ve died.
Your significant other, the person you’ve spent the past 15 years of your life with, every day and every night; the one you took trips with and who prepared your meals and with whom you often shared the couch, is devastated. And all anyone has to say this person about the loss of their longtime companion is, “Just get another one.”
If you’re a human reading this, the idea that you’d die and everyone would tell your survivors to just get another version of you is unthinkable. But for any dogs or cats reading this, the previous paragraph is sadly familiar.
Your former companions often have to hide their grief because mourning a pet as if you’re a member of the family is still frowned upon to a large degree. Society has essentially told them (and you) that you’re disposable. Interchangeable. So what does it even matter what happens to your body when you die?
In Ewing there is Friends Forever Pet Crematory, which opened in October, that offers something still seen infrequently in pet funerals—attention on the individual.
Proprietors Robert Amato and Andrea Anastasio are both longtime funeral professionals who happen to view pets as actual members of the family. To them, treating a lost cat or bird or dog as an object to be merely tossed on the bonfire with any number of other deceased animals is appalling.
And yet, in the pet cremation game, this very method of bulk disposal is the norm. “We want to make a difference,” Amato says. “We want to take this to a whole new level.”
Amato’s and Anastasio’s quest for more dignified, personalized (read: humanistic) care of deceased pets began a few years ago “because of what happened with our own little pet,” Amato says.
The Robbinsville couple (they are partners in business and in life) had a small dog that they had cremated. And in a moment only a pair of funeral professionals would notice, they realized that the urn they got back was just a little too large to hold the ashes of one tiny canine.
They investigated, Amato says, and found that— as is common practice in pet cremation—their dog had been cremated with several other pets, and the ashes somewhat indiscriminately scooped together.
“It was probably mostly our dog,” Amato says. “But there was more in there than there should have been.”
For professional counselors like Deborah Antinori, this is not just bad business, but a violation of the trust pet owners feel when they lose their companions. Antinori runs a practice in Jersey City that Friends Forever features on its website (friends4everpetcrematory.com) as a resource for those coping with pet loss. She also wrote an audio book, “Journey Through Pet Loss,” to guide mourning pet parents through the grief of losing their companion animals.
The fundamental trouble with the pet cremation industry, she says, is that pets are often viewed as “just a dog,” or in some other dismissive way, by people who don’t have or particularly like animals. Consequently, people who want to have a keepsake of their pets in the way people want keepsakes of deceased parents are often mocked and dismissed.
This, Antinori says, is the kind of mindset that allows places like the one that cremated Amato’s and Anastasio’s dog to continue doing business. Pets and their owners, despite how prevalent pet ownership and self-professed animal lovers are in this country, are marginalized, Antinori says. And the grief for pet parents who discover that their faithful and beloved companions have essentially been treated like so much solid waste is like coping with a second death.
“This could be one of those things that haunts them,” she says.
This is, of course, the exact thing that Amato and Anastasio want to eradicate for pet parents. To them, grief is grief and is not to be trivialized simply because the deceased had a tail. Amato grew up in Brooklyn with parents who ran a funeral parlor and has seen the grieving process up close all his life. He’s been a licensed funeral director since 1989; Anastasio since 2008.
One thing a life spent caring for the deceased has taught Amato is that dignity is king. Another is that people mourn loss because of a strong bond with the deceased. But what does not matter is whether that bond is formed for another person or a pet mouse. And if you snickered at the idea of someone mourning the loss of a pet mouse, you’ve just helped prove the point that pet loss is marginalized and that people who grieve when an animal dies are seen as just being silly, Amato says.
They’re not being silly. They’re hurting. They miss their companion. And they want that companion to be treated with dignity and respect, Amato says. He knows, “because that’s what I want.”
So with a deep love of animals—Anastasio is the type to pull over on the road to pick up a wounded animal and take it to the Mercer County Wildlife Center in Titusville—and an ingrained understanding of the importance of treating with utmost respect anyone mourning a death, Amato and Anastasio set out to create a business that guarantees that each pet, no matter how small or what type, is treated with as much respect and care as any human being.
The process starts with picking up the deceased pet, from a home or a veterinary hospital. Unlike most pet funeral businesses, which pick up bulk, refrigerated (even frozen) animals on a weekly route, Friends picks up just the pet and immediately attaches a steel identification tag that stays with the animal the entire way through the process to ensure there are no mix-ups.
For the cremation, Friends offers private services that guarantee only one pet is cremated at a time and semi-private services in which more than one animal is cremated. But even in semi-private cremations, Amato says, each animal is sealed in its own chamber and the ashes are never mixed, so pet parents are assured to never get a keepsake that contains another animal’s remains.
“Friends Forever is not run as a disposal business where your pet is just a number,” Anastasio says. “They will be handled in the most humane and thoughtful manner, the way we wanted our Spike to be handled.”
Friends does offer communal cremations too, for those who do not want keepsakes. But even so, the practice Amato and Anastasio are running is designed to provide each animal with the dignity it deserves for having been a faithful companion to someone. You may also opt for a burial at sea, complete with a prayer service and a memorial certificate.
After the cremation, Friends also sends the family a letter of condolence and a place online to post stories, photos, and music. The Pet Parenting Gateway is the business’ online place for memories and shared stories. There’s also a booklet to help guide you (and the kids) through the grieving process.
With funereal services in Amato’s blood since he can remember, he never had any doubt he would end up in the field for his career. It’s just a surprise exactly which end of the field he’s ventured into.
“If you had told me five years ago that I’d be in pet loss, I’d say no way,” he says. “But I want to help people through a difficult time. I like helping the families.” And that jells well with his assessment of his own feelings about pets.
“I’m very much an animal lover,” Amato says. “We have a little mini-dachshund. And I just want to wake up every morning and be the person my pet wants me to be.”
Friends Forever Pet Crematory is located at 1879 Pennington Rd., Ewing. Phone: (609) 882-1800. Web: friends4everpetcrematory.com.
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