Thoughts on grief
January 25, 2007 at 12:58 Losing our family cat, Amy, to cancer this week had me re-visiting the whole grieving process emotionally and intellectually. In my adult life, I've buried my sister, my parents, my father-in-law, two cats, and two dogs. It’s been quite a while since I lost a pet, and I was stunned by the depth of my grief and the physical sensation of it—the lump in my throat, the pain in my chest, the white-out feeling of exhaustion, the surreal sensation of time standing still or accelerating.
This week I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore. I let my shoulders shake and the sobs wrack my body. I grieved with an emotional abandon I seldom let myself experience. And when I collapsed into bed last night knowing Amy was gone, I felt as if my insides had been scoured clean. No, there wasn’t an end to sadness but there was peace, a lightening of spirit, a clean place to start living a changed life the next day.
It seems it is so much easier to grieve for a pet than it is for a person. From the first realization that something was wrong up until her last moments with us, I was unstinting with my emotion. I keened and cried, I walked around pale-faced and red-eyed without self-consciousness.
I sat with Amy for hours. I made her comfortable. I memorized her face. And I said everything I felt compelled to say, everything I wanted her to know about how much I loved her, how much I would miss her, how it hurt to see her hurting, how I’d do whatever I could to make things better.
Why is it so much harder to say the same things to the people we love? Why is it when serious illness claims a family member and we know death is inevitable or imminent, we swallow our words, put a lid on our emotions, and try so hard to keep our sh*t together? Do human relationships have to be so complicated or do we make them that way?
When someone we love is dying, a part of us wants to hold them in our arms and put loving words in their ears—but we can’t. We want to spill our tears onto their bedsides, but we don’t. We want to tell them what they’ve meant to us but our words disappear like tears in the shower. We fear burdening and exhausting our loved ones with our emotions and grief, and so we’re quiet.
We do the “right” things. We show up at the hospital or the home. We do what needs to be done. We try to express so much with so little. We hide a thousand unspoken words in small gestures and small talk. We want our presence and acts of kindness to say it all—and they DO say a lot. But do they say enough?
Maybe, just maybe, it would be better for the ones we’re losing and better for us if we could be freer expressing our love, concern, and loss in the moment rather than burying it like an artifact to be unearthed and analyzed later. Maybe if we really tried, we could overcome our reserve and be a bit more honest with ourselves and those we're closest to. Maybe if we succeed, then our swirling pain and emotions would be like sand that scours us clean, making room for good memories, a shining place to stow joy.
January 25, 2007
Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.
Leftovers
Reader Comments (25)
I am so glad you were able to grieve freely this week. How is everyone else doing?
At one point yesterday, she was angry that there really was nothing we could do for Amy and incredulous that the vet couldn't give Amy some medicine. "They can't just say she's OLD and has CANCER and give up! They need to TRY HARDER. If a medicine isn't invented yet, invent it!"
Mr. A was upset but glad Amy would not have to suffer. He understood the whole concept of euthanasia but hated the idea of her being cremated.
And E was the one who took her to the vet on that final trip last night. Amy was in the process of dying naturally when they got her on the table, and this made things worse not better. It wasn't a smooth finish, traumatic to witness.
You are absolutely right about people grieving for animals in a different way. The grief we showed for Charlie the horse when he died before Christmas was far more open and raw than when a family member dies. I think you are right as well in that if we were more open then recovery would be easier. Stumpy's bottled-up grief at her Grandfather's death is causing her no end of pain yet she's happier talking and thinking about Charlie. You've given me food for thought and I will definitely show her this post at the weekend when she's home.
In the meantime, love to all of you. I know how deep that pain goes and I'm thinking of you all.
As you say, human relationships are so complicated. It's our memories. I think that screws up "being in the moment" every time.
I'm sorry for you and your family. The loss of a loved family pet is such an acute pain. It makes you feel more helpless, I think. I'm sorry.
I don't really have much to add to this discussion. At least, not much that I can articulate. I did want to send my sympathies. We put our dog, Bob, to sleep about three years ago and I still think of him and miss him.
I've lost many people in my life but never with time to say and do the things I've wanted to beforehand. I don't know what I would be like in those circumstances.
There is a book I once read that a woman wrote about her mother. At the end of the book she describes her mother's death. All her grown children and many grandchildren were gathered around her bed. They said their goodbyes to their cherished mom. I think a goodbye like that is rare but, oh, it is what I would wish for anyone.
Blessings...
I come from a family with very guarded feelings, but I remember when we had a litter of kittens who were very sick and dying one after the other, how my father stayed up all night with them and their mother and cried when they died, and also how he took the last three left to the vet in a last-ditch attempt to save their lives (one did survive.) I never saw him behave in that manner, even when his mother died.
My father's death and my reaction to it remains a mystery to me. We had not been in great terms for the last three years of his life, and I rushed to France when I was told that he had only three more weeks to live at most. We never really spoke during the week that I was home. He was very sick and in the hospital by then. Maybe a week after I had returned to the U.S. my mother called me to let me know that he had passed away - I did not even cry. I do not remember ever shedding a tear over my father's passing.
My lack of having grieved him has left some sort of a blank space in my heart, and I still have no sense of closure over his death (he died in 1993.)
Take care, Tera
The only beautiful passings (with family lovingly saying goodbye and speaking their true feelings) I know of are ones that are shown in the movies, and even those usually occur when the dying person is unconscious or unable to look at and talk to the family members. In other words, most of us are too inhibited to truly express ourselves due to fear of our loved ones’ reactions, wanting to be strong for them and spare them more pain, and the general rules of “decorum”.
With all my pets, my grief has been like you described … gut-wrenching sobs … a huge sense of loss … pain that always surprised me by its force. With people, even my own expectations are different. For example, I greatly admire those family members that hold it together at funerals of a loved one, being able to greet the attendees and thanking them for coming and those truly amazing people who find the strength to eulogize their loved ones—I wish for the calm and strength they possess. At my father-in-law’s funeral, I let myself lapse into heavy tears (not sobs) at one point, but my own son (16 at the time) comforted me and told me to be strong. So being strong and not letting go is what we, humans, seem to be all about. I don’t remember telling him he had to be strong, but he knew that was what was expected by society so he was.
With the loss of our dog, Hayley, recently, we played similar roles to your family’s. I let it all out at home (even missing work). Our son (away at college) expressed outrage that we would lose her and couldn’t something else be done. My husband was the one who took her to the vet’s office for the final time. That must have been incredibly hard, but he didn't want to talk about it afterwards.
I truly hope you are finding some comfort with your family and perhaps Petey as you adjust to life without Amy.
You are a beautiful writer.
Now it's up to Time to make that hole smaller in all your hearts.
Courage, my friend.