Sometimes life deals you something that you have absolutely no frame of reference for getting through. Often, that is grief in general. It’s not like we grow up inherently knowing or learning how to to grieve well. But when something touches your life that is traumatic, and results in unexpected pet loss, those are some very unchartered waters.
Whether you lost your pet suddenly from an accident or unexpected illness, when they were young or even if they’ve gone missing, the space this grief will occupy in your heart and life is bound to be huge. An actual sea of quicksand.
If you’re reading this post, my heart is with yours. I wish you weren’t on a mission of finding things to read that make you feel understood and normal. But I promise you are.
With a gentle heart, I want to validate the feelings that are too exhausting to articulate. They are complicated, disorienting and all encompassing. I know, I’ve been there too.
It’s Surreal
When you are coping with sudden pet loss, it can feel like watching someone else’s life unfold in front of you. We know that terrible, unexpected things happen every day. We know because we hear about it happening to someone else.
When traumatic death touches your life personally, it’s unfathomable.
While any grief can feel traumatic, unexpected pet loss, or the loss of a pet that is particularly young, disrupts a secure normalcy that most of us walk through life with. The foundation of everything you rely on, literally crumbles.
In a fog, the days carry on, but your world has come to a screeching halt. You’re existing in an alternate reality. A reality that, with every fiber of your being, you want to rewind and undo.
The pain, sadness, anger and confusion is a cluster that feels disorienting and impossible to navigate. Sometimes, all you can do is sit and cry. Your body and brain slowly start to absorb that this is actually happening. It takes time.
It may be the worst thing you’ve ever experienced
The death of a pet you love and cherish so dearly is the gut wrenching. But when they are here one day and suddenly not the next, there are no words to adequately articulate that experience.
People often confess, while experiencing the loss of a pet, that it’s harder than the loss of a human. That seems to be further cemented when the loss is sudden and unexpected.
Pets become an anchor, north star, and most reliable love in life. We humans that love them, count on that. It energizes us and we start to anticipate that love is infinite and never ending. Which actually is true, but it’s harder to envision without someone physically present.
Although it’s likely that we’ll all be faced with grief someday, when you don’t have time to prepare yourself, it can truly be the worst loss of your life.
I really want to validate that this is normal. My mom died the year after my traumatic loss and I still maintain that the trauma of an unexpected loss was the hardest.
My mom and I were able to exchange words and hold hands. I could not have been ready, but I knew what was coming. It’s not that other losses don’t cut deeply and painfully. They do. It’s that unexpected grief cuts, twists and jabs at your broken heart. On repeat.
The guilt can be off the charts with unexpected pet loss
Can’t talk about grief without talking about guilt, but even more so with unexpected pet loss. Especially if you feel you played a role in the events that led to your pet’s death.
Hard to talk about. Hard to think about. But if we do talk about it and expose it, I think it can give guilt less control.
Two subsections of the guilt topic: Hindsight and forgiveness.
Hindsight
We replay everything tracing back the steps that led up to the loss and determine multiple places or times we could have done something differently to completely change the outcome.
Humans are experts at hindsight. It does somersaults in your mind. We do what-ifs very well. Not so good at even-ifs though.
We tend to think we have ultimate control over the world and what happens within our bubble. That’s not exactly true. We can shape things, mitigate things, intentionally plan and do. But we don’t have ultimate control.
Nor do we have a crystal ball.
Forgiveness
With unexpected pet loss, there is often someone along the road that you feel has played a hand in what you’re faced with. Needing to blame someone, even if it’s yourself, is a valid human emotion.
If it truly is you getting the brunt of the blame, for instance if there was an accident, I can almost guarantee you that the guilt factor will be the toughest thing to contend with.
Forgiveness for something that can’t be undone can feel impossible. Maybe to an extent it is.
This part, the guilt and regret, it takes time and intention to work on. There is no magic potion. Slowly over time, with goals and motives to work through the guilt, it can start to lighten.
Something that I (eventually) learned from my loss is that you can forgive someone (including yourself) without the requirement to forgive what happened. Such an ambiguous statement, I know. It took me a long time to be able to reflect on it with clarity.
You can forgive the individual and not the act. These actions are not mutually exclusive.
You deserve to grieve
The trauma of unexpected pet loss ends up taking over and taking precedence. You spend time in the revolving door of “make it make sense” and where did it go wrong. But you do deserve to get to grief. Trauma and grief can be so intertwined that they seem like a messy ball of two colors of yarn. Yet they need to be coped with separately.
For a grieving pet parent, who has lost a huge, significant part of life, grieving and mourning from your heart is crucial.
Can you ultimately learn to cope with the trauma and grief separately? You can. We can’t unown the experiences we’ve been through, but we can chose what to prioritize or give more weight to. Eventually.
Find ways to honor and remember your precious pet. Write to them. Find places in your world where you feel close to them and spend time there. Without the guilt or hindsight. Without replay or self punishment. Easier said then done but worth it.
You’re worthy of grieving and mourning your loved one just the same as anyone else who is faced with grief.
People may not understand your grief
People don’t really understand grief in general. When it comes to the uncomfortability of unexpected loss people may sadly make themself scarce.
They don’t want to say the wrong thing, but don’t realize that saying nothing is also the wrong thing. I try to give people grace. We live in a world that is terrible about grief.
Find supportive niches. Identify the people in your life who can be a healthy support. Lean into those people and spaces. You could even, if you’re up to it, spoonfeed people what you need with a little “I appreciate you just being present” (hint hint). You can even nonchalantly send them tips for supporting grievers and hope they get the point.
Remember too, that no one can dictate your grief and other people’s opinions are not your concern.
You will survive
I know it feels like maybe you can’t survive. That’s completely understandable. Believing that you will is different than knowing how.
Unexpected loss is a marathon, not a sprint. Not to sound dramatic but living through this, and grief in general, pretty much demands a metamorphosis of who you are.
The only guarantee in grief is that no feeling lasts forever. It does change. It’s so slow that you might not even see it until one day you sense or recognize that grief is feeling different in your body and in your mind.
Affirmations can help with optimism. Hold onto hope that even when you can’t imagine how, you will be ok.
Unexpected and traumatic pet loss feels like a raw open wound that even air hurts. Emotions are fragile. Time is weird. Everything is different. On the path to grieving well, give yourself as much compassion as you’d give others. You deserve that.
