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?

Bluebell50

So sorry for your loss

Both of you are experiencing grief. What I don't think people understand is that you could both be experiencing the same 'level' of grief and deverstation but from different people or pets.

I don't understand the attitude that grief is higher on the ladder depending on who died. That to me is dismissing the other persons feeling because you think they shouldn't feel the same as you. Grief is the level it is for that person who is experiencing it not by what caused it.

To try and explain it better three people may be experiencing a level of 5/5 for their grief. One might have lost a parent, one a partner and one a pet. Their level of pain and emotion is the same even though what caused it it different. And I am not saying a pet is the same as a partner before everyone piles on. In society we tend to put people first etc and pets way down the ladder. But the level of emotion is what that person or pet meant to 'them' and nothing to do with comparing a human with a pet. You don't get to choose how much pain you feel with grief. Which is why some people are surprised at how much or equally how little they feel.

Your mother is higher up than the persons pet in society but it makes no difference to the level of emotion that it may cause to that other person. That is why some people may find their grief is so much stronger for a friend than a close relative.

So both are you are being a bit unreasonable by not acknowledging that you are both hurting in your own way with a loss.

What an terrible way to lose your mum.

No wonder you were upset with your colleague - that was insensitive

She wanted comfort and she chose the wrong person to seek it from in the circumstances.

“RatHammock having lost one much loved parent at 15 and the other recently at 51 I can tell you the pain and grief is not much different.”

I don’t mean to sound nit-picky MostInept (like the username btw) but your experience of grief is not the same as someone who, for example, lost bost parents when they (the bereaved) were in their 50s. Losing your remaining parent after having experienced bereavement so young has its own unique pain.

Cathy Rentzenbrink writes very well on loss & the words “There is no hierarchy in grief” are applicable here. I’m sorry for your loss.

Losing any member of your family, human or animal, is devestating. Do not underestimate the impact of losing a pet as many people are closer to their animals than they are to their human family and actually spend considerably more time with them.

Your colleague was not undermining your experience. Grief is grief. Loss is loss. Perhaps go and talk to her. Losing an animal can be a dreadful experience and not everyone shows compassion (unlike when you lose a human member of your family), I am sure she will appreciate your compassion.

Sorry for your loss.

Yanbu. I've lost a few pets over the years and it's bloody horrible and upsetting. I've also lost both parents and am still receiving counselling 4 years later to try and cope. They can not be compared, and that's coming from a massive animal lover. Sorry for your loss op

This happened between two friends of mine a few years ago. One friend had just lost her Grandmother, the other friend liked to make everything about himself so started comparing it to the death of his cat . He didn’t stay a friend for very long after that, I have to say. The two cannot really be compared imo and I say this as a cat lover.

I’m so sorry for your loss . Your colleague is an idiot.

There's a lot of competitive levels of grief in this thread, which is the really U thing.

I choose to read the comment as the other person trying to empathise out of kindness. Not saying her grief is 'better' than OPs.

When something or someone we love dies, we grieve in our own way for as long as we need to. It's not a contest.

But I also think there could be bit more compassion on this thread in the other direction.

Absolutely. All these posts saying people are idiotic or ridiculous for their depth of grief for losing a pet or the way they regard their pets as family - just because it isn’t the same for you, doesn’t mean you get to write off and invalidate how other people feel about the animals in their own lives.

I don’t think either the OP or her colleague have been unreasonable, I think both perhaps slightly insensitive to each other but understandably so as managing our own grief and then being expected to react appropriately to others is immeasurably hard. We all experience things and react differently and there’s no rulebook or right or wrong way to go about it.

A lot of posters being nasty about people grieving for their pets are pretty unreasonable, and unpleasant though. Not unexpected - through work I support people with pet bereavement. One of the things we talk about is how not everyone in our lives will understand how we feel because he/she was ‘just a’ cat/dog etc. and ways to deal with that.

I think a good general approach to someone expressing distressing feelings is to listen to them, believe them and try to empathise if you can (this doesn’t need to include direct comparisons of personal experience though!), but at least don’t completely invalidate their feelings and call them idiots for feeling how they do.

BigGreenOlives: Cathy Rentzenbrink writes very well on loss & the words “There is no hierarchy in grief” are applicable here. I’m sorry for your loss.

^ This.

Yabvu, grief is intensely personal and cannot be compared to anyone elses. She may well be feeling as devastated as you. It's not a competition, her comment doesn't take anything away from the fact that you are devastated over your mum, her grief doesn't threaten yours in any way. It's immeasurable and for that fact impossible to say "X is worse than losing X"

She probably shouldn't have said it though, I'd never say "I know how you feel" because I really don't, and cannot.

Funny o!d thing, grief, I had to go on anti depressants after the death of my beloved best friend (dog) yet when my grandad died I felt absolutely nothing and was in work that afternoon.

Sorry for your loss as well op, was shared by you the strength to get through it as best as you can

Some really unpleasant comments on this thread...calling people ‘idiots’ for experiencing loss and grief. Words fail me.

I love my dog, but if I had to chose between him or my mum there would obviously be no contest! Who on earth would think it's comparable

Jeez. There is no hierarchy of grief. Your colleague was wrong, but so are some of the posters on here. For SOME people, losing a pet feels as bad as losing a family member. For most, no, but it's totally out of order to invalidate someone's feelings just because the person or thing they have lost doesn't rank high enough on your imagined list. If people are grieving, let them grieve. Everyone is different.

I don’t think it is unreasonable to experience deep grief at the loss of an animal- particularly as for a lot of people it will be their first experience of death. But to compare it to someone’s loss of a mother, child or partner is just insensitive. In the OP’s case the circumstances in particular are difficult losing a parent at a young age and in an unexpected fashion.

At the end of the day you can buy another dog or car. Of course they won’t be the same animal with the same personality but you can replace the role they had in your life. You cannot do that with a parent.

When my grandmother died I was devastated but was able to process the fact that she had been suffering, was ready to go and had a very full life. My parents are now at an age now where you could say they’d had a full life if something happened- my in-laws not so because they are 13 year’s younger and into really just starting their retirement. As things stand at the moment, it would far more shocking if something happened to the inlaws so I do think age can be a factor.

Grief is indescribable. There is no comparison. Just empathy. Each grief is suffering, each grief changes over time in different ways. One can not be compared to the other. It is not a competition. It could a clumsy way of her to try to show empathy in her honest grief stricken way. I lost grandparents over the course of 40 years, grief was different and unique with each one of them. I also had grief from miscarriages, comparing any type of grief is dangerous territory. I have children and dogs. Both are loved. My eldest dog was there for me in desperate time. Knowing as I did my feeling for this dog and how his death would effect me was the motivation in him siring several litters. No puppy is a replacement (we have 3 of his puppies that live with us). God forbid I lose a child. I’m sorry for your loss. Be kind to yourself and her - grief is awful.

I am so sorry for your loss OP .

My father died when I was 17, he had me late in life and was in his 60s. His death was still unexpected though. My mother died last year aged 93. My father’s death was devastating for all the reasons stated above. But the loss of my last surviving parent old as she was was not a walk in the park. For most people it’s a painful rite of passage. It brings home your own mortality and the fact you are next in line now.

I’ve told this story on here before but I remember a colleague who had once lost a dog saying to my colleague “it would be like one of your children dying” and I was
YANBU, it’s a shocking comparison.

Sorry for your loss OP.

Grief is grief. For me, losing my cats was harder than losing any human, so I don't think your colleague was BU.

That's the issue isn't it, age, family hierarchy, human or pet makes no difference. It's the emotion and pain they cause for that particular person when they die. No one gets to say I want to feel 5/10 when my uncle dies but I should feel 10/10 pain when my mother dies. Do people really think you have any choice on how much grief you feel?

Whilst people may have their own personal hierarchy of grief that they think should be followed its terrible to try and impose that on anyone else.

I will never forget a thread on here in which some pet owners admitted they would save their dog from a burning building rather than a child. So clearly there are people who do rank animal lives over human ones, probably overlapping with those who cannot grasp that euthanasia can be a kindness for animals and instead prefer to force lengthy and protracted suffering on dogs and cats to extend their existence far beyond any quality of life.

I don’t get it. I know what it is to love a pet and to grieve its loss for years. But it is in no way equivalent to a human member of the family.

When you take on a dog or cat or any animal except a tortoise maybe, you know that it will die in the next ten to twenty years. That knowledge isn’t built into family relationships - you anticipate your parents living to old age and your children outliving you. You expect a future of growing older, going through each life stage with their love and support. You know that won’t be the case with a Labrador. The shock and the loss of a future makes the grief different, deeper and more profound. To lose a child is the most unimaginable injustice and cruelty in the world. It really is not the same for a cat.

I think it was your colleagues clumsy way of enpathising with you and she chose her words poorly. I think in some small measure you may have been the tiniest bit U but given what you're going through I totally get why. I'm so sorry for your loss and I hope you find strength and peace in the days to come.

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.