Grieving a Pet

Nobody sends flowers. There is no bereavement leave. You are expected back at your desk the next morning, sounding normal.

So the grief goes underground, and grief that has nowhere to go tends to get heavier rather than lighter. Many people find themselves crying in the car, then apologizing for it.

You do not have to justify this to me, or rank it against other losses before we are allowed to talk about it.

Pets live inside the ordinary hours of your life. The first minute of the morning. The walk you always took. The particular sound of them settling down when you sat on the couch.

That is why the loss shows up in such small, relentless ways. You reach for the leash. You cook too much. You come home and the quiet is wrong.

It also matters who they were with you through. Many people lose an animal who saw them through a divorce, an illness, a move, or a stretch of years when there was no one else in the room. Losing them can reopen every one of those chapters.

If you made the call to euthanize, you may be replaying it constantly. Whether it was too soon. Whether you waited too long and made them suffer for your sake. Whether the last day should have looked different.

That review can run for months, and it rarely produces an answer, because you were asked to make a loving decision with incomplete information under time pressure.

We work with the guilt directly rather than trying to talk you out of it. Often what is underneath it is not wrongdoing at all. It is how much responsibility you took for something you loved.