do you ever deal with borrowed grief about ollie?
my cat just got diagnosed with cancer and we're not sure how treatable it is or how much time we have left with him. going to a specialist tomorrow about it just because our vet wasnt very knowledgable
my cat is the first pet thats been mine fully, and my first pet as an adult too. we found him as a stray about a month before i turned 18 and managed to get him inside the week after my 18th birthday. we've only had him for about 10 months at this point. it feels like too soon
obviously he was a street cat for most if not all of his life, but i just dont know what to do about it. hes not gone yet, hes happy and seems healthy, but im trying to prepare myself incase i need to make a decision i dont want to have to make. and its really hard
sorry if this is a tough ask you just have given some really great advice before and the way youre attached to ollie is very similar to how close i am with my cat. feel free to ignore/delete if this is too much tho
Oh yeah, borrowed grief is huge. I have to very purposefully not think about some things while I'm at work or else I'll just start crying out of the blue.
I think...
Okay, so I'm pretty sure I've told this story before but I'm gonna do it again.
I had this dream once- you know those dreams that feel so REAL, like the moment you wake up you're not even sure where you are?
Well I had a dream once where I lost someone I love in a very sudden and traumatizing way, and in the dream- which felt so incredibly alive and real- my number one fear, my number one regret after losing them- my most horrific thought in the aftermath- was, "Did they know how much I loved them? When they were alive, was there any doubt at all in their mind how important they were? Did they know how destroyed I would be by losing them?"
It was incomprehensible that they were gone, that I'd never hear their voice again or speak to them (ah fuck I'm crying irl, abort abort) BUT even worse than that was the fear that they died feeling like anything less than the entire world.
So... I was lucky enough to be physically nearby to that same person when I woke up as a snotty sobbing mess, so I could tell them immediately that I loved them so much, and I decided immediately that more important than anything else was telling people I care about that I love them.
Making sure I do everything I can to show them that they are cherished, so that one of us is inevitably separated from the other, niether of us has any regrets.
It's... probably a symptom of some kind of neurosis or something, but I can't stand to have the last thing I say to someone be unkind. I always have to tell them I love them, that I want them to be safe. So I know if one of us goes unexpectedly, I'll know I can grieve their loss without regret.
I love a lot of people, and I love Ollie. The difference with Ollie is that he is almost one hundred percent garunteed to pass away before I do. I'm going to live so much longer than him, if all goes well. Best case scenario for both of us ends with me mourning his loss for many lifetimes longer than he will ever know.
And I know now that when he's gone, when he leaves me behind (fuck, crying again, shit) my first major regret will be wondering if he felt loved enough. If I was kind enough, if he was happy enough, if he lived a life with any kind of pain or fear or worry.
So... I remind myself that no time is garunteed. That we have any time at all is a miracle, and it will someday end. So any time spent grieving is time that would be better spent convincing him he is cherished.
In a world where we can't own anything, where we can't possess anything, where we can't take anything with us, where we are born alone and die alone whether we like it or not....
Ugh. I don't know how to explain.
Okay, so like... if separation is inevitable, then the ones we love are already gone. Time just hasn't caught up yet. So I try and ask myself, "if I lost them yesterday, and I was here without them today, what would I be wishing I did? What feelings would I be wishing upon them? What would I regret not doing?" And then I try and DO that
And with everyone and everything I've lost since then... that's helped.
Living like what I love is already gone, anticipating what I might regret, and then speaking and acting in ways that correct that regret before it can be cemented into reality.
Appreciating the now, loving as much as I can. Being patient with the annoyances I'll someday miss and appreciating them as fleeting things makes them... enjoyable.
Listening to a boring ramble or obnoxious snore and knowing that a future version of me will wish I'd listened closer... it makes that precious.
I'm sorry you're losing your baby. I'm sorry that nothing I can say will make tht easier. I think the one thing I CAN say is that it isn't actually over yet, and in my opinion, the best thing you can do now is think of everything you'll wish you could have done for him when he's gone and do it now while he's still here.
And then after, you'll know that you did all you could.
It's helped me, at least.
❗TW❗
My fiancé and I lost our dog back in January. We got him from an animal rescue and had literally just celebrated having him for a year, and then a few days later he was gone. It was *my* first dog and he was only around 2 or 3 years old (there was no history of the pet when I arrived at the animal rescue so it was an estimate by the veterinarian).
We fully knew - and accepted - how complex owning a Frenchie would have been, what with all their health complications and whatnot, but did not expect it to come around so quickly. We were expecting - and hoping - to have had a good number of years with him.
He had this issue before in the past but not as bad, and we got medication for it, but this time it got so much worse. He couldn't really move his back legs and whenever we tried to pick him up, he would react - so we knew he was in pain. When we eventually managed to get him off the couch, we carried him outside so that we could help him go to the toilet - we even agreed with one another that we'd stay up all night if needed to monitor him and then take him straight to the vets in the morning since there was nowhere nearby that was 24hrs - but then when we came back inside the house, it only got worse.
I'd rather not subject readers to the events of that night - out of kindness. All I will say is that you could tell how terrified and in pain he was. The image of that night is etched into my memories - maybe as punishment? Who knows.
We managed to get in contact with my in-laws who agreed to drive us to an out of hours vets they located (thankfully we were the only people so he got seen to, quickly).
There, we were told that he had IVDD and based on what we described of the night, the vet said there was no guarantee he'd last the night. We had to make the really difficult decision that night and is - without a doubt - the worst decision I've ever had to make.
The same scenes play in my head frequently and again and again, the same thoughts pop up in my head:
"did we give up on him too quickly?"
"Did HE think we gave up on him too quickly?"
"Did he know he was loved tremendously?"
"Did he like being a part of our family?"
The list goes on..
Six months on, I wouldn't say I'm any better. I may not cry as frequently, I may hide my emotions more, I feel like I've just become a shell of sorts.
I still have his blanket in the bed next to me and I still take his lead with us whenever we go - I'd like to think that we're taking him for walks that he never got to go on.
Honestly, I don't know where this post is going. It was initially meant to be an acknowledgement of how op was feeling, but it ended up being nothing of the sort.
Apologies all.
Survivors guilt for you I guess.
