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?

Grief is grief, how you experience it is totally a personal experience. I wasn’t close to my mother and when she died it was a full stop on a chapter that had ended long ago, there was no grieving. I was more upset when my cat died because my emotional attachment to her was very strong.

Your colleague was crass in saying it out loud but it doesn’t mean she wasn’t speaking her truth. I find competitive grieving far more repugnant than crassness.

have all the glory of it if it's so sodding important that you win the grief contest.

Well put.

Sorry for the misuse of the word psychotic- I was responding directly to another poster who used it. I accept that it should have been psychopathic. I don't think anyone who saves someone/something that is important to them is a psychopath. In fact, the opposite is true. But it is generally true that people will save that or those closest to them rather than a total stranger 'for the good of humanity'. It's like that dilemma of would you save your spouse (who has lived for 50 years or so) or a stranger's child (who has not had a chance of a life)? You could argue that, morally, you should save the child but I think many would struggle immensely with that sort of choice.

At the end of the day, people are permitted to feel how they like about grief, and if a pet dying means more to them than a human, then they do not fit into your neatly categorised hierarchy. If you start ranking it, then you will also get people saying that the death of a sibling is not like the death of a spouse, or that the death of a spouse is not like the death of a child. Utterly and totally unhelpful. You can speak for yourself and your experiences, but not for others. Let people grieve and don't label them as freaks if they don't feel the same as you.

This all just strikes me as another part of the Me Me Me syndrome where people conflate any situation to be equivalent to them and to validate their feelings despite the obvious inequality.

I think sometimes the above is absolutely correct. No-one can tell anyone how they should feel or how they should grieve but it's the insensitivity of publically making comparisons that most other people would see as unequal is what upsets people so much. You can think what you like, there's no thought Police, but to express it to someone suffering is awful.

There was a poster on here in the past who'd had a miscarriage at 5/6 weeks who used to post about being a bereaved Mother and say 'it's not a competition' or 'no hierarchy of grief' when women who had given birth to stillborn children or lost their children after birth told her how upsetting it was for them and that she absolutely didn't know what they were going through. Her partner didn't want to try again and she'd also post on the infertility boards despite having two children already because her pain was the same in her view. She upset a lot of people.

I knew someone years ago who had her bum groped over her clothes on the tube. Horrible, criminal act that was distressing and frightening. But she spent months going on about how she now knew what it was like to be raped. No she didn't. She had no clue and to say that to women, many of whom had been raped was totally inappropriate.

Nobody here is saying you can't experience grief at the loss of a pet and that for you, that might be worse than the loss of a human. Many, many people don't think that way though and to suggest, as happened here, to someone who has lost their beloved Mum in traumatic circumstances that you know how they feel because you've had your pet put to sleep is just the height of self-absorbtion.

Agree that people will grieve internally how they wish and people have all sorts of quirks on what they love and are attached to.

You just don't say it to someone else!

@StarWarsHolidaySpecial

Spot on

Have not RTFT but I think you were being unreasonable. I can promise you that the way I felt losing my Dear Dad and the way I felt losing my beloved cat were the same and no less a grief.

I feel quite insulted when people try to belittle the experience of losing a furbaby. To some, they are more important than relatives/parents. One only needs to have read a handful of threads on here about abusive parents/relatives to know this.

Additionally, pets are innocent. They don't lie to you, hurt you or abuse you. It's - imo - disgusting how people put humans above pets, pets usually show far more loyalty and they don't ask for much. With human'kind' the way it is, I would definitely feel more for an animal or pain or dying than a human. I don't feel that makes me 'sick' as someone said on the first page. It simply makes me more aware. And more in tune with goodness and decency as animals are far better than humans. I feel sad that people, in 2018, still don't understand that pet grief is as bad if not worse, than grief over a human. Pet bereavement leave exists in many countries for a reason.

StarWars I agree that people should not be comparing grief and likening it to other experiences. And in your example, the 5-6 wk miscarriage is not a stillbirth and the groping is not a rape, so it is totally wrong of the people to say that the experiences are the same. However, the woman who had the miscarriage is entitled to feel grief and the woman who was groped is entitled to feel trauma. They may feel a deep, genuine sorrow that actually takes them longer to recover from than someone who has experienced an objectively 'worse' event. They can't help that. People recover at different rates and you might not understand why someone never gets over an early miscarriage, but that doesn't make it any less real for them. Telling people how they should and how they are allowed to feel is not right. It happens in so many areas of life and I think it is pretty damaging.

YANBU. I lost my mum in similar circumstances and if someone had made this comment to me I hope I would have had the balls to call them out like you did. Well done. And I am a lifelong pet owner and animal lover but people need to get a grip. Look after yourself and don't waste your time questioning your reaction to your colleagues comment, I don't know how anyone would even think to draw a comparison. The grief will always be there but things do get easier with time. Sending you lots of love x

PeakPants - that's exactly what I'm saying. Everyone adjusts to things differently, finds things traumatic to different degrees and grieves in their own way.

Which is 100% fine. I don't think anyone could object to that. But to say to someone who has had a stillbirth that you know what they're going through because you had a miscarriage at 6 weeks is going to cause distress. As is saying to someone that lost their Mum suddenly that they know how you feel as your pet has died.

I think if anyone came onto a thread about a Mother losing her child and said they knew what she was going through because their hamster died, most people would report that and hope they were a troll.

*@SalemBlackCat
*
Pet bereavement leave exists in many countries for a reason.

Where? Link please

@bluewoohoo Google is your friend

I did google, couldn't find any.

I've got a fish tank, looking forward to getting days off at the council every time I find one floating.

My daughters friend has an ant farm. They're always dying off. She could be on permanent bereavement leave with this policy

Australia, NZ, I believe the UK, and America.

It is 3 days pet bereavement leave.

@SalemBlackCat

Where though? A small micro business of two people, or NHS? Makes a difference.

My company has pet bereavement leave, and 'paw'ternity leave

@ADastardlyThing

Is it a company you run or work for? I'm intrigued. Does it apply to all pets? Even my fish?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/03/dog-leave-people-pets-paid-days-off

Basically, if we lived in a culture where it was acknowledged that humans can actually have strong attachments to animals, nobody would even question this. It's just that our culture has evolved with a clear set of hierarchies where some relationships are deemed more 'real' than others and those between humans are always held to be of greater value than those between animals and humans. However, it's not necessarily a 'truth'.

In Australia it is a government thing. Industrial relations laws makes in mandatory (I believe, but not 100% sure) for all places of employment.

I'm an animal rights activist. I'm vegetarian and don't wear leather or fur etc. I try to campaign for legislation to support all animals and create better living environments.

What most of the pet people on here are talking about is ME ME ME. How I feel, what it does to ME. I need time off work for ME.

It isn't about valuing animals.

I work there, and no it wouldn't apply to a fish! Its a week off and applies to pets thought to typically require a 'settling in' period, mainly dogs and cats but there is discretion for other animals like rabbits or similar. No one has ever applied for it though unless it's a cat or dog as they are generally the only ones that could do with a bit of time to adjust :)

(It's half pay too!)

"It's just that our culture has evolved with a clear set of hierarchies where some relationships are deemed more 'real' than others and those between humans are always held to be of greater value than those between animals and humans. However, it's not necessarily a 'truth'"

This exactly! Going by the snide comments of some on here though, some don't have the capability to stop, think and understand it. It is the height of human arrogance imo to suggest a human death is worse than an animal one. What gives people the right to say such a thing? There are 2 types of people; first believe humans are better than animals and animals are 'disposable' - heck, just pick up another one cheaply from a sanctuary, as someone crassly said above, and the grief for them is less. The second, are emotionally aware and understand that humans have connections with animals as strong as, and in many cases stronger, with animals and the grief is no less strong than when a human passes. It really is pointless to attempt to explain the second to the first, as they do not have the ability to understand. They perhaps never will. I am just glad I am not like them.

Everyone keeps insisting their is no hierarchy, but there is.

My great aunt Betty dying is not the same as losing a parent for most people.
If I stub my toe I do not need to same amount of time off work as if I lose my leg. There are degrees of suffering.

Although, I can see how circumstances alter cases and people have different experiences. However, if your experience is outside the norm in that you love your cat more than a parent you are best advised to keep quiet.