Loving someone through grief you don't share

Does your partner need to fully understand your grief to support you?

I lost my dog over the weekend.

My baby Brownie, whom I have cared for in the past seven years and was separated from in his eighth; the year I moved away from home. I could only watch helplessly through the phone as he had a seizure and took his final few breaths while my mum video called me over the phone.

And I cried, and I cried, and I cried.

Grief collapsed my shared history with Brownie into a moment. Even though I was no longer in the same country as my dog, my mind returned to the mornings I gave Brownie his food, and his bark of joy whenever I’m home, and when I bent down to ruffle his fur and saw his tail whirl like a little helicopter.

And I will never get to do any of that with him again.

And my husband helplessly looked at me. In the same country, in the same room, but the grief of a dog-lover made it such that he might as well have been looking at me through a video screen as well.

He never had a pet.

Shared life, different grief

The experience of grief is isolating. I really wanted to be understood but couldn’t muster the energy to explain how much my Brownie meant to me, to explain why I am drowning his memory with salty tears.

And I knew, even if I spent the week explaining, my husband can never truly understand.

He already knows, in an abstract way, how much I love my dogs, but words of explanation will never reach him the same way loving a pet ever could.

Does my love for my dog need to be understood, though? And does he need to understand in order to show up?

Showing up as we are

I cried many snotty tears.

He folded tissues.

He asked ChatGPT what to do.

Then he sat with me, let me lean on him and cry some more.

My sister invited us over and though it’s a deviation to his usual schedule, he made time so that he and I can go over. So that I can grieve with my sister, who also spent a good many years with Brownie.

And you know what?

Brownie still left a hole in my heart. My husband cannot do anything to fill that hole. He also can’t see why I love the dog so much.

But he showed up in the way he knows how.

So to my earlier question, “Does your partner need to fully understand your grief to support you?”

I think not.

As the person being held, it helps to recognise the shape of what your partner can offer. There may always be a gap, especially in grief, because we lived different lives. But your partner needn’t fully understand to support you.

In the hard moments, maybe this is what love looks like. Waiting and watching from across the gulf of grief, but refusing to leave you alone on your side of it.