When Grief has Four Paws

At some point in all of our lives, grief comes to stand beside us. None of us gets to avoid it completely, although how it arrives, what it looks like and how we experience it will be different for every one of us.

One thing I often talk about with clients is that there is no right or wrong way to experience grief, and there is definitely no timeline. Grief isn't a linear experience. It can creep up on us when we least expect it. Sometimes that grief can sit quietly beside us, sometimes it can feel impossible to ignore.

Each day, each memory and each moment can bring another wave as we slowly learn to live alongside our loss rather than expecting ourselves to somehow leave it behind.

When I was training to be a therapist, I can remember my lecturer talking about the grief onion. The loss itself remains at the centre. It doesn't disappear, but gradually life starts to build layers around it. The grief is still there, but as our lives grow around it, sometimes it doesn't hurt quite as much.

That memory has always stuck with me whenever I talk about grief with a client. Sometimes we can feel pretty okay. Other times, something peels back one of those layers and suddenly the hurt and loss can feel incredibly raw again.

Often, I hear clients say that they've been told "you should move on" by well meaning friends and family, but grief isn't always that simple. Sometimes a loss can feel so impactful because it doesn't arrive on its own. It can connect with other losses, other painful moments and grief that perhaps we've never really had the opportunity to process.

One loss can touch another.

And suddenly we aren't only grieving what has just happened. We can find ourselves grieving what came before too.

But what if our grief has four paws?

And then there is another kind of grief. One that I think can sometimes be misunderstood, minimised or even dismissed completely.

Pet loss.

"It's just a pet."

I've always found it difficult to understand what "just a pet" is actually supposed to mean.

For me, they are family members. They're comfort, warmth and a presence that somehow helps me feel regulated just by being there. They're my constant shadows and my secret confidants. There's a freedom to the love we experience with our pets. I can simply be me and not feel judged. There aren't conditions attached to that love or expectations about who I need to be. They don't care if I'm having a bad day, if I don't feel like talking or if I'm not quite myself. They're just there. They don't need me to be anything other than what I am in that moment. Often just having them nearby would make things feel that little bit better after a rubbish day.

Without noticing it, our pets become part of our routine, our lives. Feeding times, walks, opening doors, making space on the sofa, letting them up on the bed (a bone of contention in my house) or automatically checking where they are before we leave the house. Being greeted by them when we get in. We talk to them, worry about them and laugh at the ridiculous things they do.

And then there are all the little things we don't necessarily think about until they're not there anymore. Their smell. The softness of their fur. The warmth of them leaning gently against us. The familiar weight of them beside us and the little sounds they make around the house.

They become part of what home feels like.

So when they're no longer there, we're not simply grieving a pet. We're grieving them, their presence, all the little funny interactions, the moments of joy and all the things that came with having them in our lives. The silence when you come back home and there's no one there to greet you. Even going to the bathroom suddenly feels different when, for years, apparently that was never something you were allowed to do alone.

It's those tiny, everyday moments where their absence can suddenly feel huge.

In the space of just over seven months, I lost two of my own constant shadows, Nova and Ollie.

I think writing this is partly my own way of externalising some of that grief, of taking all those thoughts and feelings that have been going around in my head and putting them somewhere outside of me. But I also wanted to write about it because pet loss isn't talked about enough. For something that can hurt so deeply, it can sometimes feel like we're expected to grieve it quietly.

Talking about it matters. Saying their names matters, and being able to share our grief is important because even if it's "just a pet" to you, to me they were Nova and Ollie. They were companionship, comfort and love. It's missing them simply being there. It's missing all the little things they did, their personalities, their presence and the place they had in my everyday life. It's coming home and still expecting them to be there. It's that split second when you forget, and then remembering all over again that they're not coming back.

And that hurts.

The hardest decision love asks of us

Another part of losing a furbaby that isn't talked about enough is the decision that many of us will eventually have to make.

The decision to let them go.

It's an incredibly difficult place to be and we can question ourselves endlessly. Was it too soon? Did I wait too long? Could I have done something else? What if I'd given it another day?

And then comes the guilt.

Even when we know somewhere inside ourselves that it was the right decision, knowing that doesn't necessarily make it feel right. We're making a choice that goes against everything we want in that moment. We want them to stay. We want another day, another week, another year. We want to bring them home with us.

We don't want to have to make that decision.

It's probably one of the toughest decisions we ever have to make and yet, sometimes, it's the decision that has to be made. Because what we want and what they need can be two very different things.

I think there is something incredibly selfless in recognising that. Sometimes loving them means making a decision that we know is going to break our own heart because keeping them with us would mean asking them to stay for us.

And I think that's love. Knowing that keeping them with us might be what we desperately want, but loving them enough to recognise that it isn't what they need. Putting their comfort before our need to keep them and taking on the pain of losing them so that they don't have to continue experiencing theirs.

It doesn't make it hurt any less though.

It doesn't mean we won't question it afterwards or replay those final hours and wonder whether we got it right. Grief and guilt can sit very closely together, particularly when the responsibility for that decision was ours.

And that critical voice can be cruel.

Did I do the right thing?

Did they know I was there?

Could I have done more?

Those memories can come back when we least expect them and we can twist and turn them around in our minds, almost as if somewhere amongst them there might be an answer that changes what happened.

There isn't.

But that doesn't always stop us looking for one.

We often hear about denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance when we talk about grief. If only I'd... What if... Maybe it would have... Why? Why did this have to happen?

But grief doesn't neatly move through a list of stages. We might feel angry one day, feel like we're doing pretty okay the next and then suddenly find ourselves right back in the what ifs again. Sometimes we can feel several of those things at once.

Because that's grief.

And acceptance?

I'm not sure I'm there yet.

Maybe that's okay too.

I'm a therapist. I understand grief. I've sat beside many people while they've experienced it and I've talked about it more times than I could ever count.

But knowing about grief doesn't stop me from having to feel my own. And I think that very human experience of grief helps me connect with my clients too.

And feeling guilty doesn't necessarily mean we've done something wrong.

I think sometimes guilt keeps us going back over it, looking for something we could have done differently, when actually there wasn't another ending available to us. Endings are tough sometimes, especially when we don't feel we have much control or say in how they happen.

And the decision that we have to make, the one that hurts us the most, is almost the most loving one we could ever make.

But it was only a pet...

One of the things I find particularly difficult about pet loss is how easily the grief that comes with it can be dismissed.

Sometimes people aren't sure how to comfort someone who is grieving. We don't like seeing people we care about hurting and it can be difficult to know what to say, so we reach for something that we hope might make things feel a little better.

"At least they had a good life."

"They were old."

"It was for the best."

"You can always get another one."

Most of the time those words are well meant. People are trying to comfort us and sometimes there just aren't any words that are going to make it better. But sometimes, without meaning to, those words can make the loss feel smaller.

Maybe in that moment we don't need someone to find the positive. Maybe we just need someone to recognise that it hurts, and that this grief matters as much as any other.

Because who gets to decide which relationships we're allowed to grieve?

Think about how much life can happen in the ten, fifteen or even twenty years we might have an animal beside us. Relationships change, children grow up, we move house, we experience other losses, we go through periods where life is bloody hard and others where it's wonderful.

And through all of that, sometimes they are the constant.

And then they're gone.

Yet pet grief often isn't given the same space. There isn't necessarily compassionate leave from work. There may not be a funeral or any of the rituals we associate with losing a person. People might check in for a few days and then life carries on.

But we still go home and notice they're not there.

The empty bed. The unused bowl. The lead we no longer need to pick up. That automatic glance towards the place they would normally be.

And it can be lonely.

Sometimes we even start questioning our own grief. Why am I still this upset? Shouldn't I be feeling better by now? It was only a pet.

There's that word again.

Only.

But grief isn't a competition. We shouldn't have to prove how important a relationship was to us before we're allowed to grieve it. If they mattered to you, then losing them matters too.

And maybe when someone we care about loses a furbaby, we don't need to have the perfect words. Sometimes there aren't any.

Maybe "I know how much they meant to you" is enough.

Sometimes we just need someone else to see our grief and recognise that the relationship mattered.

Learning to live with the pawprints

I don't think grief is about forgetting and I'm not sure I like the idea of "moving on" either.

They're not physically here anymore, but that doesn't erase the years we had with them or what they meant to us.

We still have the memories. We still tell the stories about the funny things they did. We still say their names. Sometimes something they used to do will pop into our head and make us smile, and sometimes that exact same memory might make us cry.

And I think that's grief really. The same memory can make us smile one day and completely break our heart the next.

And maybe, eventually, another furbaby comes into our lives.

Loving another animal doesn't mean we loved the one we lost any less. There's no way to replace that. They're different, the relationship is different and they find their own place in our lives.

There's room for both.

For now, I'm still learning what life looks like without two of my constant shadows.

Sometimes I'm okay.

Sometimes something catches me completely off guard and one of those layers of the onion gets peeled back.

Another wave.

And grief comes to stand beside me again.

Maybe with time it won't stand quite so close. Maybe the waves won't come as often. That doesn't mean I'll love or miss them any less. Maybe it just means life is starting to build those layers around the loss.

And when grief has four paws, I don't think we need to rush ourselves to "move on".

Maybe we just need to allow ourselves to miss them, to remember them and to talk about them.

And maybe eventually we can get to a place where the pain of losing them doesn't overshadow how bloody lucky we were to have loved them in the first place.