
The Appropriate Weight of Grief – Men, Cats, and the Writing Life - iamben
https://medium.com/@michaelzadoorian/the-appropriate-weight-of-grief-ff7f597d41ba
======
Udo
Matching other people's expectations about grief is a fool's errant, and I
completely understand the impulse to just hide it - in fact, I believe that's
a good default plan.

When my mother died from cancer, there were two extreme reactions from
immediate family and friends: the first group believed that I was no longer a
functioning human being and needed acute help, the second group told me a few
days after her death that I should be over it by now since parents die and
everybody is fine with that. The interesting part is, both reactions happened
without me knowingly showing any outward signs of extreme grief, I had simply
told them I needed some time to myself. I'm very very glad that I didn't try
to make people "understand" how I felt at the time.

When my cat got sick and died from congestive heart failure two years ago,
some of the reactions I got were " _I bet you failed to take care of her
properly and that 's why she died_", and " _whatever, just get a new one, they
're interchangeable_". Again, I didn't communicate to the outside how I felt,
because it's utterly pointless. If people react like that without any data, I
can only speculate how bad and besides the point things would have gotten had
I actually opened up about it.

As soon as you grieve publicly, people will start telling you how to move on
and why your grief is inappropriate. But grief is not for other people to
participate in the first place, it's a personal experience. Especially when
it's a pet (and the male cat owner is probably the most stigmatised
culturally), many friends and family won't understand, and it can't be your
mission to make them understand.

In my opinion, being outwardly stoic while grieving is almost always the best
option for everybody involved.

~~~
ugdg
I am not so sure about this. It may feel like a good default plan, while you
are going through things, but I feel (atleast in my case) there were
consequences longer term. Especially when roles are reversed and the person
you care about isn't coping well and needs help. In those cases I found myself
backing off when I actually needed to be stepping in to help.

------
JadeNB
Grieving for a lost friend, whether cat, dog, human, or otherwise, is a
profound process, and it should not be rushed, measured, or compared against
any standard. I'm not sure that I understand the impulse to make the process
public, but nor would I tell someone that his or her grief must be private, or
kept only among a small group.

I do wonder about the need to tie it into gender, though. I (a man) cried,
sobbed, bawled when my cat died, in the vet's office, and later in private
with my wife, and nothing in anyone's reactions suggested to me that there was
anything inappropriate about my doing so. I believe, and hope, that, if a man
feels that it is inappropriate for him to show emotion, then that says more
about his own self-perception of manhood than about others' perceptions of
him. (This is not meant as a criticism of the author, but as good news of a
sort: if I am right, then he need only liberate himself from his self-imposed
strictures, rather than fighting against the censure of a broader society.)

~~~
Xcelerate
> and nothing in anyone's reactions suggested to me that there was anything
> inappropriate about my doing so.

Then luckily for you, you know people who are very different than some of the
people I know. Off the top of my head, I can name at least five men who would
make fun of another man for crying over the death of a cat.

It's well known that the rate of completed suicides for men is far higher than
that for women
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide)).
I suspect a lot of this comes down to the fact that society expects men to be
tough and hide their emotions, and thus there is more of a stigma attached to
them getting the help that they need.

Personally, one of the saddest things I've seen related to the death of an
animal (and not just any animal, but a goose, which I'm normally not too fond
of since one chased me when I was little). I was visiting my father's work one
day, and I saw a single goose standing alone in the parking lot, looking
confused. My dad told me that there had been a flock of geese, and one of the
geese was standing in the road. A car with a driver who was clearly annoyed
(or psychopathic) had sped up and intentionally killed the goose standing in
the way of his car. There was a dark patch on the road where the goose had
been struck. As you may know, geese tend to mate for life, and when the rest
of the flock had moved on, this goose's partner remained behind. I don't know
if the goose knew that its partner was dead (as opposed to lost), but the way
it just stood there barely moving was one of the saddest things I've ever
seen.

