To love an animal. (Warning: This is a long post) [View all]

These are my reflections on grief.

The good people of DU have softened the pain of my dog passing away yesterday. You have spoken to me both in the lounge, and privately. I cannot tell you how much this has meant to me, and if I had the strength to do so right now, I would thank each of you individually. But I don't have the strength to do that.

There is one particular DUer that I would like to call out with a complement....JoseBalow. They posted a poem which I will type at the bottom of this post. I would like this DUer to know that I understand them. I read your posts, JoseBalow, and I sense how close you feel to your pet(s), so I want you to know how much your post helped me this morning.

What follows are my feelings, and how CRAZY grief is. My feelings do not seem logical...they seem PRIMAL, and I am having trouble understanding my grief. When I don't understand something, I research it. I dig for answers...and here is what I am pondering this morning. There are probably going to be a lot of words here, so be warned...

My wife and I do not sleep together these days due to my back issues. We sleep in separate rooms, on separate floors of our home. However, when we DID sleep in the same bed, she consistently used to ask me "Why do you always wake up with a huge smile on your face"?
My answer would always be "I don't know...I've always been like that".

This morning, in my lonely recliner, upstairs from where my wife was sleeping, and as per usual, I woke up smiling. And as I awoke, I came to the realization that my dog died yesterday.

And I began to WAIL. Crying harder than I probably ever had. A primal wail. Unnatural sounds. Sounds so deep that they felt like they started at my toes, traveled up my body, and exited my mouth, sounding like a noise that an unknown animal in the jungle would make, rather than a sound a human would make. Pure, agonizing preternatural grief.

For those who are not familiar with the word "preternatural", here is a definition from Google:

Preternatural grief is an agonizing, overwhelming form of mourning that transcends ordinary human experience. It describes a profound psychological state where loss feels so deep, haunting, or unending that it blurs the line between the natural world and the uncanny, radically distorting an individual's perception of reality.

And as I wailed this morning, I tried to rationalize and understand this feeling, and I asked myself "WHAT THE FUCK, MAN"?

I have cried like this only twice in my life:

First, when my father died when I was age 11. I have thought about this a lot, and came to the conclusion that this primal crying, at this particular time was due to several things: my age, the fact that my father had died, and sheer terror since all my uncles were telling an 11 year old kid "you're the man of the house now".

The second time this happened was in the year 2000, when I had a major depressive breakdown, triggered by the fact that I somehow suddenly recalled the traumatic variables of my father dying 30 years earlier.

I've also had brief periods of this type of grief/crying when our two previous dogs died.

I didn't cry like this when my mother died in 2012, probably because I was at the point of collapse from exhaustion from being her sole caretaker for years, and partly because my friends rushed to my side and kept me drunk for 3 days (I quit drinking for good the following year).

So, while I was wailing this morning with a towel stuffed into my mouth so my wife would not hear me doing this while she was downstairs...I heard her doing the exact same thing through the walls.

I ran down to console her. We ran into each other's arms, and we both said something like "WHAT THE FUCK"? Then she said "it's like there's an empty hole in the house".

We are both in our 60s, so we have both seen a LOT of death by this time. All our parents have died...aunts, uncles, friends, you name it. And we dealt with it with normal grief and sadness.

The death of a pet doesn't feel "normal". It feels different. It feels strange. It feels primal, and it feels harder to understand. I am not trying to minimize the death of a human being. I am simply stating that the death of a pet, while it logically should not do this...it seems to defy possibility.

I did a little reading about this, and this is what I've found:

Unconditional, Conflict-Free Love: Human relationships are complex and often involve disagreements, whereas the bond with a pet is built on unwavering, non-judgmental affection. Pets provide a constant source of comfort without the emotional baggage or conflicts that can sometimes distance us from family or friends.

Complete Daily Dependency: Your entire routine—feeding, walking, and playing—revolves around them. When they pass, the sudden absence of these daily, physical touchpoints creates an immediate, constant, and inescapable void in your schedule.

The Burden of Euthanasia: Pet owners often have to make the direct, heavy decision to end their pet's suffering through euthanasia. This immense responsibility leaves many owners battling heavy feelings of guilt and second-guessing whether they could have done more.

"Disenfranchised" Grief: Society often minimizes pet loss, which makes the grieving process much more isolating. When people lack support or are told "it's just a pet," it restricts how and where they can express their heartbreak.

Pets have complete unconditional love for us. They are the natural masters of that. And the loss of that love leaves a hole in our lives like people rarely do.

Some of the above comments may be debatable, or maybe not, I'm not sure. I'm just trying to make sense of all of this, and maybe it will help those of you who are going through the same thing make sense of all of it as well.

Finally, here is the poem that JoseBalow posted as a reply to one my my other OPs:

For Those Who Have Died, Eleh
Ezkerah - These We Remember

'Tis a fearful thing
To love
What death can touch.
To love, to hope, to dream,

And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
Love,
But a holy thing,
To love what death can touch.

For your life has lived in me;
Your laugh once lifted me;
Your word was a gift to me;

To remember this brings painful joy.

'Tis a human thing, love,
A holy thing,
To love What death can touch.

—Judah Halevi or Emanuel of Rome; 12th Cent.