Is it okay to feel sad about my pet's death? Bottom line: Grief is Grief.
- aplacetoflop
- May 22
- 5 min read
by: Kristy Ratcliffe, Treasurer of Blue Ridge Green Burial
Have you ever felt ‘silly’ about the intensity of grief you’ve experienced after the death of a pet? Have you tried to talk yourself down from the emotional ledge with an inner narrative that an animal’s life somehow doesn’t carry the same weight as a human’s life, and therefore doesn’t ‘deserve’ the intensity of sorrow that the death has elicited? Many of us have struggled with these feelings when a beloved pet has died. We even water it down in the colorful catchphrase, ‘they’ve crossed the rainbow bridge.’ As if it is a ‘Death Lite’, storybook version of death and grief. But for many of us, the death of a beloved pet carries as much weight as the death of a beloved human. Psychology describes this kind of grief as disenfranchised (or hidden) grief.
The APA Dictionary of Psychology (https://dictionary.apa.org/disenfranchised-grief) defines disenfranchised or hidden grief as: ‘grief that society (or some element of it) limits, does not expect, or may not allow a person to express. Examples include the grief of parents for stillborn babies, of teachers for the death of students, and of nurses for the death of patients. People who have lost an animal companion are often expected to keep their sorrow to themselves. Disenfranchised grief may isolate the bereaved individual from others and thus impede recovery.’
In this post, I aim to reassure readers that GRIEF is GRIEF! Suffering is suffering, and, like physical pain, the experience is unique to each person experiencing it and it is not open for judgment or interpretation by others.
September 2001. The world changed that month. Americans and others around the globe were experiencing ALL the flavors of grief and everything in between. We had collective grief as the tragedy played out over and over on our television screens and we heard the stories of families experiencing their own ‘ground zero’ after the sudden, pivotal event separated them from their loved ones forever. The shock, confusion, and disbelief impacted us no matter our race, ethnicity, gender or economic status. We experienced anticipatory grief full of worry, uncertainty, and exhaustion as we wondered what war, tragedy, and global chaos might be looming. There was distorted grief, where we got angry and depressed, where we grasped for explanations, looked for someone to blame, searched madly for ‘The Truth’, and attached ourselves to conspiracy theories or anyone who seemed to know something about what the heck just happened and why.
The event led to complicated grief, in its guises of chronic grief, delayed grief and absent grief. The event was almost unbelievable, like something out of a movie. In its wake, it took some time for our neurons to build new pictures of reality and begin to piece together that this tragedy really happened. Our questions and our need for security kept us engaged and re-experiencing the event over and over again.
Those who were not directly impacted by the loss of a loved one likely experienced disenfranchised grief, feeling that their grieving, either for the 9/11 tragedy itself or for other events playing out in their own bubble, was somehow less valid, diminished, or even shameful. They may have denied themselves the support they needed for their own process in the shadow of such a huge, world-shaking, public event.
This brings me to the anecdote that I initially sat down to share in our newsletter. It’s a story about my dog Nantahala, grief, and 9/11. Hala was the first dog my partner, Andrew, and I shared in our adult life together. She made us a family, not just a couple. She was along for the ride when we packed everything and moved across Australia with only our little Subaru sports wagon, filled to the gills, towing a mountain of home goods stacked on a 7-ft box trailer. The adventure took us across the Great Australian Bight, camping along the way. I remember so many details about the first day of that epic trip. After a late start, we decided to forgo setting up camp and instead stayed in a little run-down camper for rent. Mounted in the corner was a tiny 1980s portable TV with rabbit ear antennae, and the novelty of the thing compelled me to turn it on and see what we could see. It was at that moment that we learned about what was happening in New York City. In that little metal box far from home, on that tiny grainy screen, we caught the live footage of the Twin Towers burning, and eventually collapsing, along with the horror of the jumpers. It took days for me to get through to my family on a payphone somewhere along the Nullarbor Plain to find out whether anyone in our inner circle had been affected. As far as anyone could tell, we were in the clear.
Weeks later, we learned that the sister of one of our close friends back in the USA had been killed in the Pentagon. Ben and his family had just memorialized his sister, but he was determined not to succumb to the fear being peddled from so many angles. He was coming to Australia to visit us in December, when the warming weather would be perfect for a tour of the forests and waterfalls on the island of Tasmania. So, life was good. We had settled into our new rental in a beautiful rural setting outside of Ballarat, Victoria; Hala had a great place to run, play, and explore; we were about to set off on an adventure with Ben; we were young and free. But in the few days between his arrival and our departure for Tasmania, our Hala was hit by a car. The driver carried her, still breathing, down our long driveway to us. Ben and Andrew jumped into action, calling the vet hospital and getting Hala into the back seat of the car. She died on the operating table. There was just too much internal damage. I wailed, sitting on the concrete floor in the back room adjacent to the operating room. The staff were kind, gave me space, and gave us our options for the disposal of her body. We elected to take her home and bury her with her blankets in the forest where we took her for daily walks. The men dug. I sobbed and held Hala’s swollen and lifeless body. I was embarrassed to be so emotional over my dog while Ben helped to dig her grave so soon after the violent death of his sister. When I apologized for it, he reassured me that grief is grief, that my experience was valid. I was allowed to grieve without hindrance, and I’ve remained grateful to Ben for the grace he gave.
If you would like to learn more about the stages and types of grief, you might like to explore these links:
**Photos: In the summer of 2024, a dear friend made the decision to euthanize her very old dog Bella, who was in a lot of pain. I was honored to be there to support her and bring some beauty and reverence to Bella’s burial.
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