Colleague compares pet death to relative

[ItsNotTheSame]

So long story short... my mum passed away a few months ago. Very sudden & unexpected, happened at home when she was alone and she was found there. Paramedics pronounced her dead on the scene. No chance to say goodbye obviously very shocking and caused me a lot of issues with anxiety and depression etc since while trying to come to terms with this. She was only in her early 50s and no illnesses before this as far as we knew.

Anyway, I’m back at work and have been for a couple of months now. My colleague has recently had a family pet put to sleep due to illness. Was working with said colleague when she made a comment to me along the lines of how upset she was and said I must know how she feels as it’s the same as my mum.

This really annoyed me and I told her in no uncertain terms that this is not the same and I walked away feeling angry / upset. I now feel a bit bad that maybe I’ve over reacted and been over sensitive. So opinions please.... Aibu?

Differentnameforthis you said She was looking for some common ground and was trying to empathize with your grief.

NO SHE WASNT! Did you actually read the OP? She was seeking sympathy FROM the OP about her pet, not giving any sympathy about OP's Mum. Sheesh.

I do get it, @U2HasTheEdge but not first hand. My DM lost both her parents at the age of 10; she's only recently started talking about how it still affects her. She recently told me that the date of her mother's death is indelibly printed on her and she was quite upset when she said this. She went on a trip down memory lane last week, visited her old haunts, the school she attended and visited her parents' graves.

She'd never expressed all this to me before. We've had a difficult relationship over the years, so it helped me to understand her better.

i lost my mum 5 years ago aged 62 no illness just died in her sleep i am still trying to get over the shock .but someone said to me there is no hierarchy in grief a child is different there can be no worse heartache to you it may be an animal but to her it may have been her everything .

YANBU. I've had a few people do this to me and it fucks me off. My Dad passed away suddenly when I was 22 and my friend said "I know just how you feel, I had to have insert name of cat put to sleep." What the fuck. Just not comparable at all. And I say that after just having to have my elderly cat put to sleep. Did that compare to watching DHs Mum pass away after a hideous 3 year battle with cancer? No. Not even a little bit.

Very insensitive of her. But perhaps you were being a little over sensitive to a stupid comment. Forgive her crass comment and put it down to her grief.

YABU. The colleague was trying to be empathetic and nice. Perhaps she drew on the only experience of loss she’s had. And some people (me included) love their pets as much as people.

For those saying losing a pet can’t compare to losing a parent - FOR YOU . You really can’t say how others feel. I was NC with my dad - I was sad but not devastated by his death

There will always be people in that situation. However, the norm is that the death of a parent is far worse than the death of a pet. So intelligence, empathy and common sense would stop most people from attempting to draw comparisons.

Yanbu. Sorry for your loss and sorry you had to deal with such a crass comment after returning to work

I've had a lot of pets and quite a few of them have died. Yes, it really hurts, and I was very sad at the time. But if I was 'grief stricken' every time a pet died then I should probably, for my own mental health, not own pets. If you choose to have pets, you probably need to come to terms with the fact that each pet will at some point die, and chances are that you will have to make the heartbreaking decision to have them PTS.

Dealing with animals dying is part of being a pet owner. For your own sake you need to find some perspective.

You’re right op, they are not comparable.

But you know this only through experience. It’s all relative and she was probably (very badly) trying to empathise using the only experience she really has.

I lost my mum as a young teenager and the grief was all consuming. It has given me many years to reflect though and people rarely know the right thing to say or do. It’s also not uncommon to focus in on a stupid remark in grief that was meant in kindness but fell massively short. My advice would be to at least achknowledge the kindness intended even if you can’t let go of the frustration.

Sorry you lost your mum, wishing you strength and peace

@BigBlueBubble

Do you really love your pets as much as your children? As much as your wife / husband / partner?

For those saying losing a pet can’t compare to losing a parent - FOR YOU . You really can’t say how others feel. I was NC with my dad - I was sad but not devastated by his death

There will always be people in that situation. However, the norm is that the death of a parent is far worse than the death of a pet. So intelligence, empathy and common sense would stop most people from attempting to draw comparisons

Which is why I said I wouldn’t have voiced that opinion - which you didn’t quote.

@tinstar

There will always be people in that situation. However, the norm is that the death of a parent is far worse than the death of a pet. So intelligence, empathy and common sense would stop most people from attempting to draw comparisons.

This. ^ In spades.

I know some people have gone NC with parents, and others have toxic narcs for parents; I respect that, and I am sorry for them. But many people DO have decent relationships with their parents, and for most people, the death of a parent will be FAR worse than the death of a pet. Even people who didn't have a great relationship with their mother (or father,) will still feel a terrible loss, and be horribly affected, and bereaved by their death(s.)

Some may be upset by the fact their relationship with said parent was never good, and will mourn the loss of a relationship that never was. The death of a parent affects someone for many years, sometimes for their lifetime.

And it has a devastating impact on someone young (ie, under 30,) to lose their parents, as they are not mentally or emotionally equipped to lose their parents at such a young age. For a number of reasons, including the fact that they don't have the vital parental support that their peers have, (when they get married, when an important relationship or marriage fails, when they have children, or when they experience any kind of upsetting life event.)

This is why, although it's a whole other debate, I am very much against people having children past the age of 45.

@NadiaLeon

I find this really hard to believe. If it IS true she is evidently mentally ill, so I don't think this is a relative comment to make on this thread.

One of my parents collapsed and died suddenly and I found the body. They weren't young - and having lost a sibling as a child, I know the difference - but I can honestly say nothing in life prepared me for what happened.

So I'd internally roll my eyes at someone comparing the death of their cat/dog/hamster to that. On the other hand, I don't have a great relationship with the remaining parent. I can easily imagine being more distressed the dog dying than parent no 2's demise.

It's difficult to quantify love, and some people may have little contact with their human family, whereas they see/nurture/care for the cat or dog every single day.

But for me, a critical difference is that when the cat/dog dies, the bereaved owner doesn't have to go through the circus of arranging a funeral, inviting all the relatives, reading the will/probate, phoning round the houses to cancel their bank cards, insurance, GP, library, clearing the house if it's a rental, selling the property if it's a mortgage. All the stuff that has to be done but can be so very hard when a person is grieving. The pet owner can just get on with grieving.

YABU. The colleague was trying to be empathetic and nice.

No she wasn't - the colleague was asking the op to empathise with her over her loss.

Generally speaking death of a parent and death of a pet is not comparable and it's certainly not fair to compare someone else's loss of a close parent to their loss of a pet.

However, DM found that losing the constant companionship of a beloved old dog much harder than the loss of her long distance, poor relationship mother. When she lost her husband suddenly, that is a very difficult form of grief, but she found she could manage it by pretending he was at work and rationalising that she didn't need to miss him at 11:35 on a Wednesday morning when he was always in work at that time anyway. However she felt the constant physical absence of the dog. Possibly also because the dog was also a support through her previous bereavement, and was a reassuring presence in the house and helped fill the sudden gap of her male companion.

Grief is complicated. It stirs up all kinds of old emotions. My first bereavement being the sudden loss of a parent in childhood, losing other relatives who have come to the natural end of life has barely registed in comparison and I easily accept that their life has passed on. When I have grieved for other people, I never know how much is truely for them and how much is that first one dug up all over again. That is so deeply a part of me long before adulthood, I can't separate it out from being a core part of my being. Each bereavement is unique to the physical proximity of the relationship, quality of relationship, nature of passing and general emotional well being.

I suspect in this case, she is probably being an ass who hasn't experienced something worse.

My darling FB son died shortly after he was born and I was in recovery from the emergency c-section that had to be performed. I'd spent 4 weeks on the wards before the birth and had got to know some of the mums-to-be. One of them came in to see me and told me she knew how I felt because her dog had died when she was a teenager and she still wasn't over it. That might be true, but it was bloody insensitive.

I loathe it when people post threads called things like “lost my darling boy today”

So incredibly insensitive.

Maybe she didn't know what to say to you and before she knew it she'd said something stupid.
When my dd died a lot of people I knew avoided me because they didn't know what to say.

Sorry for your loss.

"When my dd died a lot of people I knew avoided me because they didn't know what to say."

That's true, @Parkhead. After my FB died I became a pariah. I had to stay on the post natal ward because there was nowhere else to put me (in a side room) and only this one mum I'd been in ante-natal ward with came to see me. They either didn't know what to say or thought my bad luck might rub off on them.

It was tactless for her to say that, entirely so. I wonder if she is a person who blurts out awkward things when faced with that sort of situation?

Grief is personal, I would be far more heartbroken over the loss of one of my cats than I would my mother but that's due to my personal set of circumstances and I would certainly never make that comparison to a recently bereaved person

I once had a “friend” compare the grief she felt when her boyfriend of a year left her, to the grief I felt when my Dm passed away.

This happened to a friend of mine. Her DP died really suddenly at 22, it was a huge shock. Someone clumsily said they understood how she felt because they felt that way when their ex left them . Completely different.

I think maybe it boils down to people not knowing how to approach death and grief in general. They wind up saying the stupidest things.

Travis you really need counselling your thinking is not in touch with reality.

You can't measure misery and I'd say the same about grief