Grief

One of my friends posted about how his cat died in the night. She had been with him for ten years, though she was older than that. He'd gotten her when she was a grown stray. He said he knew she was going to pass because her health had gotten so bad. He held her and she died in her sleep. He talked about how it hurts because she's been his running buddy for years now. I understood. I know how much this hurts.

Some people are really shitty when someone else is grieving the loss of a pet. They believe that the pet's death should somehow mean less to you than losing a human.  I don't get that. In some cases, our relationships with our pets are more honest, longer, and less hurtful than relationships we have with other humans. Pets provide us comfort and loyalty without asking much in return. Pets can have amazing personalities.

We can't tell someone else how to grieve. We can't tell them what is allowed where grief is concerned. Grief is one of those uniquely individual things where each of us has no idea how we'll react. In some ways, that's scary. In other ways, it's how we know we're here, real, and alive.