I didn’t know there was a mental health condition known as prolonged grief disorder, or PGD, but I’ve certainly observed the symptoms: intense longing, emotional pain, difficulty accepting the death of a loved one and impaired daily functioning for months, or years.
It’s clear that some deaths shake the foundations of a human being more than others. Sometimes, it feels like there’s little choice but to incorporate the livid wound into your being until grief becomes a strand of your DNA.
The less settled question over the years has been whether people can feel some version of this elemental grief at the passing of a beloved pet. The traditional notion was that you bestowed domestic animals upon your children to rehearse the inevitability of loss and mourning – the notion that all living entities must cease to be.
It’s certainly true that the loss of a hamster, rabbit or guinea pig tends to be manageable. But is it possible to wrangle your emotions so effectively when the dead pet is a dog, pony or cat?
A recent study of 975 adults in the UK suggested that PGD can also be observed in 7.5 per cent of people who have lost a beloved pet, while one in five said that the death was the worst loss they had ever experienced. I’ll hazard a guess that most Telegraph readers will see these findings as coming straight from the Institute of the Bleedin’ Obvious.
Numerous people say they like animals more than humans. Wildlife presenter, Chris Packham, speaks for many when he says, “Humans will let you down. Animals don’t.” The comedian, Ricky Gervais, has declared, “Dogs are better people than people.” I have long loved the late Prince Philip’s observation of his daughter, Anne, “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, then she isn’t interested.”
Yet there’s still generally a ripple of disapproval if someone confesses to mourning a dead animal like a blood relative. As if it’s somehow immature or inappropriate, or we’ve misunderstood the natural hierarchy of emotional entanglement. But those people who live on their own with a loyal dog or purring feline tend to be totally enmeshed with their pet. It sometimes really does feel as if a part of the owner’s soul is caught up in the relationship.
Take my late stepmother-in-law, who worked at Bletchley Park in the Second World War and spent much of her life on farms, so was far from sentimental about animal life cycles as a rule. Nevertheless, her will stipulated she wanted the ashes of her two cats scattered with her, although she felt no need to be interred alongside her first or second husband.
I like to think I am also a proportionate person when it comes to animal love. I have kept a relatively stiff upper lip through the deaths of a guinea pig, two cats and a couple of dogs from my childhood years, along with three felines in adult life.
But to this day, I mourn the demise of one family dog called Bosh. He was our second Airedale Terrier, who came to us aged 18 months after his previous owners realised they couldn’t keep such an energetic, escapologist dog and work full-time (he’d leapt over their garden fence while they were out, and had been hit by a car).
Bosh bounced like Tigger, nicked pies, crammed his woolly bulk into my father’s armchair (even though it was expressly forbidden) and could knock you down with slobbering love. One memorable Easter, he was found in a heap of tinfoil, sick and ashamed, having picked off every last chocolate egg.
My mum always said she knew whenever I or one of my four siblings were returning home unexpectedly, because Bosh would start howling and throwing himself against our garden gate hours before any vehicle turned up.
Like most big dogs, Bosh didn’t age well – cataracts and dodgy hips took the zip out of his roaming heart. When he died, my mum declared she’d never own another dog because she couldn’t face that level of heartbreak again. Even now, writing about this silly, funny, big-hearted Airedale makes me well up in a way that rarely happens when I write about my beloved grandparents, who I simply do not mourn for in quite the same way. Perhaps because the death of elderly relatives after long, fruitful lives seems more of a release.
There is also the fact that owners have to take sick pets to the vets and allow that fatal injection to bring eternal stillness to their trusting faces, which leaves a very particular emotional trace. Either way, yes – absolutely – grief for a pet can last a lifetime.
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