The Upside of Taking Your Pet for Granted

There’s a particular irksome phrase that highlights our human tendency to take good things for granted. But it's not all bad — in fact, you can use it as a measure of how important your pet bond was.

I’ve never liked the phrase, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

…Mostly because it smacks of taking things for granted and not living in gratitude.

But also because it’s super true for most of us concerning most situations most of the time.

And if you’re like me and you are tempted to doubt the veracity of this statement because it makes you feel awful about yourself, just comb the titles of country songs or books written by people who had a brush with death.

Or consider any kind of movie/show/story that involves someone trying to move on from the crazy guilt of knowing they had it really good and threw it all away or never told somebody special just how much they were loved.

Because the irritating phrase, in fact, is true.

It’s one of our fatal human flaws. And while it can be overcome, it takes a lifetime of consistent and conscientious work. So I acknowledge it can be done, just usually not until you face some kind of tragedy or disaster that opens your eyes to what you’ve got in life.

The Grief-Gift Flip

Here’s why I bring it up: I believe pet grief operates the same way.

A lot of people enjoy their pets and have fun with their pets and appreciate them and regularly acknowledge how much they love them.

Too often though, it’s not until those pets are gone and you find yourself bawling over an empty food bowl or triggered by a leash near the door that you realize you had no conception of just how much you loved that creature.

It hurts, yes. It’s confounding. Horrifically painful. Eye-opening. And very, very real.

But here’s the flip… have you ever stopped to think about what a gift that is?

What I’m saying is that your grief is the gift of knowing just how special your relationship with your pet was.

Some might think this is nutso thinking, because gifts and pain don’t usually align.

Yet I think it’s worth calling attention to, because when I was ransacked by grief over my beloved dog’s unexpected death, it brought me fully present to just how much he meant to me.

And after that, each time I went through a death and then got a new pet on the other side, I was able to enjoy my relationship with that new pet with greater awareness and intentionality when it came to really treasuring and savoring the new connection.

I wish I’d been emotionally brilliant enough to figure this out without the pain, but I needed the gift of grief.

The Confounding Gift of Grief and What It Means

Here’s an idea:

Consider that the walloping scope of your grief is not random. Meaning the harder it hits you, the more beautiful your connection with your pet was.

There’s research about this, by the way. How someone grieves their pet tracks closely with the strength of the bond they had. It’s unrelated to the size of the animal, the type of the animal, the length of time you had with the animal, or how prepared you were when it was time to let them go.

It all comes down to the love.

Shame, then, that from a cultural standpoint we’re taught to treat massive grief as a problem that needs to be eradicated. Consider common cultural messages like:

• Just get through it.

• Try and move past it.

• Don’t acknowledge it.

• Stay busy till it goes away.

Get back to normal, whatever that looks like.

But… what if your Great Big Grief is actually a very accurate report delivered by some inner knowing part of you that wants you to embrace the truth?

What if it’s really telling you, “Hey. This mattered. This was out of the ordinary. This relationship shaped you and changed you and helped you in ways that you can only see now that it’s gone, because for the first time you have to look at it from the outside.”

So how would it be to really look at it from the outside and really give attention to the ways that your pet helped or supported or changed you?

The Specific Things Only You Know

Taking it a step further, I’d like to invite you to think about the distinct things that made your relationship with your pet one-of-a-kind.

Not just that you loved them or you enjoyed sitting with them in the evening or walking in the park at sunrise.

I mean the particular things.

• Maybe your cat only let you touch her paws, only at a certain time of day, only if you talked to her first.

• Maybe your dog had an extensive vocabulary of barks and you were the only person on earth fluent in all of them.

• Maybe your bird recognized your car in the driveway before you even opened the door and would squawk its little head off in pure joy.

• Maybe your rabbit had a specific way of thumping that meant something different every time you heard it and you knew exactly how to respond.

None of that transfers to another pet dog or cat or bunny or bird. It’s something that was built between you and this specific creature over years of small, unremarkable moments that nobody else was around to witness or experience.

Think of it this way: your massive grief is what happens when your mind is forced to look at the sum of this all at once. When suddenly every tiny and unrepeatable detail arrives in a flood of meaning because you know there’s no new material coming to continue the story.

Yes, that flood probably feels unbearable, but also? It’s absolutely remarkable.

It’s proof that you had something profoundly unique that you got to experience that nobody else on Earth had access to and that it took place with this special pet of yours.

Let It Be Proof, Not Just Pain

I know for me, this is where “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” takes on a whole different meaning. Instead of being admonishment for what I missed and what I didn’t realize I had, it’s almost like the legacy of what I did have.

There’s a phrase for this that might help you understand it more, as it did me: Continuing bonds. That’s when you stay connected to someone or something that you lost, but not as a sign that you’re stuck and can’t move forward.

Instead, it’s a normal, healthy part of grief, and proof that you can keep right on loving after you’ve experienced a loss.

So feel free to let yourself remember the good stuff, say it out loud, and feel gratitude for it.

Consider not adding the “but I miss them and I’m so sad” thought every time you reminisce.

You’re absolutely allowed to laugh at the ridiculous memories you have of silly things your pet may have done and it doesn’t mean your grief is invalid. It’s still there. You’re still sad. But also there’s a kind of joyfulness threaded through the grief because you have these memories.

And you’re also allowed to feel that small burst of pride knowing that you were the person who got to experience all of this out of every possible human on earth.

You are the one who got all the love.

Your grief just proves that love was real and rare. Embrace it. Hold it. Let it put a smile on your face. Know what you had now that it’s gone.