Asklemmy

I'm sorry that I dumped my grief upon you people but I'm also glad that I did. You are so kind and amazing for sharing your thoughts which makes this thread a beautify place. Reading the comments does help and I think it turns out to be something helpful to others too.

The grief haven't get better but I'm starting to get a grasp on it. I'm scared for being so alone the first time in many years. I tried to distract myself by watching shows and playing games. After a while I'd go check my cat to see if he's ok, before remembering that I won't find him anywhere. I'm, however, grateful for those sad thoughts and stupid habits as it assures me that my cat will always be with me. And that's way better than forgetting.

I'm sure my cat had at least some good time through out the 19 years (like the time we sleep together in the sunshine). It's sad to think that I can't give him more good things but it's comforting to think that he won't feel pain anymore. I think he doesn't care too much being the little asshole he always was. Fricking cats...

Maybe there doesn't have to be a point. Or maybe the point is to love and to help. I still don't have an answer but I'm glad that I asked. And I'm grateful that many of you who have it figured out cared enough to share your answers. Thank you, kind internet strangers.

I hate platitudes, but I did hear the saying something like grief is love with nowhere to go. The amount of suffering you feel is proportional to the amount of love you gave your cat, so it sounds like your cat was exceptionally lucky overall.

We lost our cat a few years ago. She was quirky and weird and sick her entire short life. She had lymphoma - the vet never even tested for it because she was too young. The day we were supposed to bring her home from an overnight stay was the day we had to put her down, and it scarred us deeply. My work sent me home, I was so useless. I cried for hours when I realised our other cat had stopped eating from half of the bowl they shared.

It sucks. It always sucks. It feels like it will never get better, and it won't, but it'll get dimmer. You'll be able to remember the good stuff more often without the final moments crashing in. It just takes time.

For now if you have to wallow in despair, do it. You lost a loved one. It's your right. Remember though, you're going through all this because your pet didn't have to. You held up your end of the deal, and your pet got a great life because you took the pain of loss away from them.

I lost my dog on Wednesday.

I’m in the mud too feeling the same things. Yesterday morning I was ready to never get out of bed, to just dehydrate and die. I didn’t move until my whole body was numb. It felt like the universe had given me my reward in her spread out over 10 years, but kept tally of all my sins and unleashed my punishment all at once directly on my soul. It was ash in my mouth and salt in my eyes, unbearable and searing pain. Until my partner came over to check on me because I was non-responsive by phone. They bodily got me up, they made me drink water and eat, they got me out of bed and into the shower. Through all my sobbing and wailing and despair they held me and told me it’s ok, that they loved me. They loved me on purpose and took care of me when I couldn’t do that for myself.

And that’s it. That’s the purpose. The point. Love. Grief is always hovering there right next to love we experience, but would you trade a single moment with your cat to avoid this grief and pain? I certainly wouldn’t. I’ll take this a hundred times over for the love I experienced for and from Mercy. It’s why we do this to ourselves when we bring a pet into our lives knowing every minute of the journey that it will end too soon. Because they fill a hole in our hearts and make our lives brighter. Even though right now it feels like there is no light in the world, you need to realize that it only feels dark in comparison to how much light they brought. It’s like being in a bright room and suddenly the lights are cut and you’re blind. I promise, our eyes will adjust, we’ll see again, we’ll breath again, and eventually, all we’ll remember is the love and warmth.

All we have to do is survive this, right now. Let it wash over you, honor them with your grief and pain, but don’t let it control you because that’s not what they’d want. Your cat would want you to continue to find the light, to find joy, and to find love. And you have to stick around for that, and you have to do it for them. You’ll do it because you loved and were loved and will love again.

The point is love.

I’m sorry for your loss. Thank you for giving your cat a good life, and I hope they gave you memories to cherish too.

The point is that the grief you feel from losing your cat is a tiny sliver of the grief in the world, being felt by all the people sustaining the loss of death.

And that’s on the best of days: a world full of suffering.

But we’re also on the brink of world war, and a hundred other disasters that could cause just as much death, and just as much grief and hopelessness from the people who survive.

So, it may sound bleak, but now that you have seen some of the deepest pain, the meaning of this life should be clear: to do everything in your power to protect as many people as possible from the feeling you’re feeling right now.

Take your own suffering as exactly the pill needed to get you up and moving. You’ve been given a glimpse of hell. And, with that, understand your job is to prevent hell on earth.

Yes. Maybe enjoy things too. The universe is meaningless and we're here by accident.

The only question is what to do about it.

Anyway, sorry about your cat. I'm sure it lived as nice a life as possible.

We live to produce value for the shareholders

Go get a kitten from the pound and quit being so dramatic. That cat would have eaten your face off if you died. I love animals but you guys are on an unhealthy level.

yeah pretty much. You're living now though, so you've got no choice right? you try to make the best of it.

I'm sorry for your loss. losing cats is harder than losing humans sometimes. we don't deserve the love that they give.

I didn't write this, but I reread it every time I lose someone I love, and it has helped me a lot. Hope it can do the same for you.

"Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."

This is one of the reasons I don’t want to own a pet

I haven't read through comments yet so I may be redundant.

Hey... So sorry. Pets are a personal relationship. That loss is a grief just like any other. It's hard because others don't have the relationship to that individual that you have.

Grief is something you carry through life. It isn't linear, but it does get easier. Grief will come in waves. You'll be fine and then it hits you out of the blue.

Do we just live and suffer and die? Well, yeah. But we also love, and get excited, and feel, learn new things, explore. We fall in love; we experienced heartbreak. We have moments when we notice the light coming through the leaves in the forest, or the sound of water on rocks in a creek, an interaction between a grandparent and young child, the smell of a newborn's head, that first time a cat settles in your lap, coffee when no one else is awake, the first sign of success in a new hobby, I could go on and on. So many things. Observations that have a visceral yet intangible emotional reaction. So so many things.

Let grief make you tender. Let grief remind you that everyone will deal with it in different ways. You can connect to others through vulnerability. Don't let it make you hard or resentful; there's so much beauty and love in the world. There's so much love in the personal relationship with a pet. There is love you can't describe.

Engage with the grief. Don't bottle or avoid it. Feel it. You're grieving because of the depth and complexity of the relationship. That's totally okay. That's healthy. It's gonna hurt. It hurts.

I'm so sorry you're feeling this right now. Take your time and feel it. Don't feel like you ever have to let that go. That's life.

Live, suffer, and die? Yeah, you could say that, but it's in the most beautiful way, and there's so much in between.

We live for no other reason than that we can. Against all odds, in a universe that wasn't trying to make us alive, we became more than the sum of our elements that compose us: to be the thinking and thriving things that we are - for as long as we are. Life itself is an act of defiance against the universe, but ultimately playing by it's rules with the understanding that we can only do so for a finite amount of time.

Your cat too was one of those defiant and emergent souls that used the universe as it's playground full of strangers, bullies, and friends alike. Never forget that which it did not know: that its time was short but miraculous in the grand scheme of a universe borne of chaos but twinkling with unexpected life.

Life is. Some is suffering, some is great. Altogether it is temporary. Some have argued that the great would be bland without the temporary or the suffering. The resolution to that argument will be clear at the end, or it won't, and maybe nothing will. So it goes.

By my estimation, in any case the best course of action is to enjoy the great. Perhaps it's also best to appreciate the great in context of the temporary, and the suffering. It's macabre, but it's either poetic, or it's making the best of a fundamentally macabre situation. So it goes.

Yes, you are correct on broad terms. Life has no objective meaning. It has a lot of subjective meaning, though.

You loved your cat and your cat loved you. You wouldn’t be upset about this if those two things weren’t true. Does that matter in the grand scheme of things? No, but it matters to you and it mattered to your cat.

I understand where you’re coming from. I have lived in despair after friends, family, and pets have “moved on”. It never gets easier, and I am tearing up thinking about the many moments like this that I have experienced, and the many more that I will experience.

It’s probably very hard to hear right now, but you should soldier through this. You don’t have to, but there are a lot of relationships that you will experience that you don’t even know about yet. There are people and pets that you haven’t met yet or that haven’t even been born yet who you will have an impact on, and who will have an impact on you.

And though this kind of loss is not something that a human can ever really leave behind, one day you will understand it, and you’ll leave a comment like this one. And you’ll know that every relationship we have is valuable (in one way or another) and worth sticking around to experience.

Life is meaningless, but only on a grand scale. The pain you’re feeling now only tells you that life is worth experiencing, even if it doesn’t really mean anything in the end.

RIP to your cat. You probably won’t ever really, “get over” the loss, but this relationship has helped you understand how to love.

When my dog died almost a year ago to the day, it was one of the worst things my wife and I have ever gone through. I know that’s proof of my privilege—but I think it’s also proof of how much animals mean to us. They’re pure good. I work a lot of weird shifts; when I come home my wife may not be awake or present, but my dog was always there. It initiated intense, physical grief in both of us.

Lean on any friends or family you have. Post here. Don’t deny how bad you’re hurting, but look for another animal to help after you grieve. I feel like our pets represent different chapters in our life, and when one leaves us a new chapter opens. That chapter may come with a different pet for a different time of your life. We chose to use the closing of our chapter as a transition point—we had a few horrible months at first but ultimately kicked some bad habits we had been building for a while. But where you are right now is horrible, and as another human being I understand to an extent how badly you’re hurting.

You sound like an attentive cat carer. Cat was lucky to have you. The point of all this is different for everyone, but cats are a big part of the point for me. Maybe for you, you can give more cats a good life as well. When you're ready of course, you may need time to grieve.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by loss. Don't let your grief rob you of the good memories you have. Life can be ugly, life can be beautiful. Don't give up on having more good moments, more good memories.

Life is change. It's literally the only thing you can 100% depend on. Once you accept that, not fear it, just accept it, you can move on to the great things that are here and now in the present.

"Just"? No. At least, but we can also do more. Keep going. Choose your own point. Good luck.

Life is a brief glimpse of awareness between two infinite voids of non-existence. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't have a purpose.

I'm sorry for your loss.

This life is what we can make of it, with a harsh overtone of constant surprises - some wonderful, many terrible.

It's that dichotomy between the darkness we grow calloused to, and the lights we find along the way that bring hope and meaning into our world.

It's hard to face the end - either through our own eyes, or the eyes of those we love... But I think every darkness can be the setting for something else to come.

I've lost enough loved ones to know they're sometimes the only lights I can see in the darker times. None of this helps explain the terrible nature of death, but I think it helps sometimes to know they aren't truly gone to us.

When they leave this world, I think they can actually end up being more powerful because our minds reach out more than ever to connect with their memory. In this way, we are never truly alone, and we always have a light to carry.

As for the immediate grief, I always turn to one of my favorite quotes on the subject:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility.

Khalil Gibran

You need https://youtube.com/@Exurb1a in your life. Profound thought like yours, performed with irreverent style.

I think we don't really appreciate time until we know it ends. Unfortunately, we outlive some animals, but we get to enjoy time with them and doing everything possible to make their life better.

I lost my dog last year, it was rough. My family wasn't there, I had to go by myself and the vet couldn't do more to save her, but I was there, she wasn't alone, she never was. I always watched her, played with her, even danced with her because she was very tall. I remember the first time I saw that she couldn't peek at the window anymore, she was getting old and fragile and she couldn't get up, I realized that I could only give her all the love I could, but I distanced myself some days from her because I didn't wanna suffer her loss, I was afraid of what was going to come in the next months.

After some time, I realized I was being very selfish because I would remember all the love I had for her, but she would remember how in her last months I abandoned her, and I couldn't let that happen. My love for her, my time with her; our time together was what make some parts of my life great! She made me feel better a lot of times and I always reciprocated.

I think one of the points of life, at least mine, is to make other lives better, that includes to help all the animals I can, even if I'll have to suffer when they're gone, because they will be happy all the time they lived.

Do we just live and suffer and die?

Largely, yes. As far as we know, there's no grand purpose nor reason of being. We're all just floundering about, trying to answer the fundamental questions of existence for ourselves. There may be an objective answer, however, which is why I do what I can to push humankind in the direction I believe is most likely to result in that discovery - even though my significance is only comparable to that of an ant.

Regarding your loss, specifically, I was in a very similar boat ~12 years ago. Honestly considered just riding into the sunset in search of Bob Ross, at the time. Today, I'm extremely glad to have stuck around to raise another cat who loves me beyond anything I ever thought comprehensible. In short, when life as a whole sucks, there's respite in the moment. When the moment sucks, take respite in the whole of life's experiences.

I am so, so sorry for your loss. I understand how you feel, and I'm sorry that I have no words that can help. Nothing can replace them.

We do a little ritual for ours on the Day of the Dead; I don't know if it helps. I guess it makes me feel a little better the rest of the year, setting time aside to remember the good times.

I'm sorry.

The point is to give someone vulnerable a full life, with safety and warmth.
From your perspective, time went by too fast; from their perspective, it was a long and peaceful lifetime, they were incredibly fortunate to have someone like you.

Also, there is an implicit assumption we carry around that to be immortal is some sort of blessing or state to aspire to, while it may very well be that being mortal is itself the blessing.

In my opinion, the highest tribute one can pay to a departed friend and companion is to again open one's home to another vulnerable creature and make him/her family.

Do it in your departed friend's memory and honor. If you could communicate again with them, you would let them know this is part of their proud and gentle legacy, to reduce suffering on the world - "Look what you did, by being who and what you were for me in life, you opened the door for someone else when their turn came."

This is what I have done, and do not regret a minute of it.

Yes. Life is a blip of mostly suffering and pain. But, within that whirlwind of time, there are incredibly warming and thought-provoking moments. For your cat, it was probably laying on your lap. Cozying up somewhere warm. Getting pet, and chasing something far too nimble to catch.

Life has genuine joy in it that makes the hard times worth it. It's through the hard times that we can find the most sympathetic and connecting moments.

I'm sorry for your loss, I'm sure your cat loved their time here, with you.

You gave your cat years of love, how can all that be meaningless? It will be a sad day when my 19yr old buddy passes but I'm grateful for his love everyday and happy I can love him back. Death is inevitable but life is what you make of it.