Why I’m Weeping for Lost Pets But Never Cry at Funerals

My heavy heart is swollen with love and grief. Its beating is a drum beat against a bruise. The sense of loss feels relentless.

On Saturday, one of my cats was injured. I was so focused on his recovery that I failed to see the danger to another. In a matter of days, I was grieving the injury of one, the loss of another, and the painful decision to give back the puppy at the heart of it all.

Much worse, I had to tell my children that their beloved cat, our first family kitten, had died. My daughter has been quiet in her grief. My son has alternated between tears of anguish and moments of pure unadulterated rage at the loss. The tears always seem to win, and nothing has ever felt less like winning than this.

I wept walking back from the woods, the body of our precious cat cradled carefully in my son’s arms. I wept again later that night. On waking, the tears found me, and throughout the day, I got used to tears falling down my face without immediate provocation. Any moment of silence or stillness gave them room to run. And run, they did.

But it was on the way to take our puppy back to the breeder who had agreed to care for her that I lost it completely. Just a few minutes away from the dropoff point, I started weeping so hard I could hardly see the road in front of me. It seems ridiculous, in a way. I, who never managed to cry at funerals for lost loved ones, was weeping for the loss of pets.

Feelings don’t follow rules.

I had to explain this to my son, who was angered at my daughter’s seeming lack of emotion. She takes after me, I think. She’s quiet in her grief, intensely private about showing it. She didn’t love our cat any less. She’s just feeling her way through it differently.

I didn’t cry at my grandmothers’ funerals, but I loved them with my whole heart. I felt it in a place that felt too deep for tears — as if tears were inadequate to the loss. I couldn’t explain to anyone that the well had not run dry; rather, it ran too deep. So deep, I could not readily access the cavernous sense of loss.

In many ways, my son is lucky that his feelings are so immediate to him. When he’s angry, his voice rises. He feels it in his whole body. When he’s sad, the tears come easily. The world is going to tell him he’s too sensitive — and has, already — but I see the gift it is to know what you feel and be able to express it.

I have spent my life stuffing my feelings into small boxes and empty rooms. I grew up in the “I’ll give you something to cry about” era. Feelings weren’t validated, only ever shamed and dismissed.

I learned that my feelings were too big for any given situation. My grief became an intensely private sort of thing — far too personal to share even at wakes and funerals where it was seen as normal and acceptable. My tears were obscene, except at family funerals when my lack of them was deemed inappropriate, as if my dry eyes provided commentary on my feelings for the loved one lost. I could never get it right.

Even now, it feels wrong to weep so vigorously for pets lost when I can’t find that same expression for larger losses in my life. But feelings don’t listen to what we think they should do. They only exist, and their outward expression isn’t evidence of the degree of love — only our ability to articulate the feelings we’re having.

Tears aren’t evidence.

They don’t measure the breadth and depth of loss. If I’m honest, this recent breakdown likely has more to do with the larger picture of my life right now. After suffering one emergency and hardship after another, the loss of two of my beloved pets likely sent me over that edge from coping to falling completely apart. It was one thing too many.

Added to that, some of the family losses were anticipated — inklings given long before the day had come. Grief was able to be released gradually rather than suddenly and all at once. I had time to reconcile myself to the coming loss long before it came. Not so with the pets that were neither old nor sick at the time.

There’s also the element of responsibility. When family members have passed, I felt the pain but not the responsibility. But my cat was my own to protect. It was my job to provide safety and protection. His death, sudden and with little explanation, made me feel like a failure. I had failed to protect him. I had let him down.

Added to that was the feeling that I also let my children down in turn. I had not protected them from this first loss that felt so sudden and unnecessary. My failure resulted in their grief — compounding my own.

Am I crying for their loss or mine? From the loss itself or the thorough feeling of having failed? There’s no clear answer. It’s all mixed up inside me, and it’s no wonder that nearly every hour, tears fall of their own accord.

Feelings aren’t meant to be judged.

Feelings are, in a way, neutral. They aren’t meant to be held up in judgment, assessed for their correctness. They just … are. It’s enough that we feel them, and there is no correct or incorrect way to experience it.

What we judge as correct is often tied to societal ideas of what’s appropriate or inappropriate. We say tears at work are out of place, but tears at a funeral are commendable. We rule that tears in anger show weakness, but grieving graveside is a strength.

Then, we judge how long someone grieves and how appropriate we think it is based on the amount of loss we expect them to feel. The short relationship doesn’t seem to measure up to the unseemly length of grief that follows. The weeping for a pet seems disproportionate to the loss. We make up rules about how people should feel and then hold them to a standard that disregards the human experience of love and loss.

But feelings are. They exist. We feel them, and we can’t always dictate their expression. Anyone who has ever found themselves crying in a grocery store will tell you that. We don’t tell people how to feel happy, but we spend so much of our lives being told how we’re meant to feel sad.

I have cried for days now, and I don’t have any expectation that it will stop soon. There’s a well of grief overflowing for a year or more of loss and hard times. I am tired and hurting, and most of all, I am heartbroken.

So, I do what I do. I cry when I need to, even if the grocery store or doctor’s office isn’t the venue I’d select on my own.

I take flowers out to the grave of a cat whose footsteps haunt me, and I tell him that he was loved for every moment of his life and will be loved for every moment of ours as well.

I kiss the puppy I’m giving up and hold her close to my heart. I make sure she’s in a good home. I tell myself that no one is at fault and that a hard choice doesn’t make it the wrong one.

I hold my son when he weeps, and I take his hand as we walk to the place where we found our cat so that he can place flowers there. I sit beside him, graveside, as he cries, and I sit beside my daughter in her silent but still valid grief.

I take good care of my other pets, and I remind myself that animals grieve, too. I do my best to stop judging my feelings. I fail at this often, but I keep trying.

I tell myself that loss is immeasurable. I tell myself that it’s okay to weep for this loss even if I didn’t weep for others. I try not to add shame to the grief. I tell myself that the price of loving is losing, and that love will always be worth it.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.