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Comment by barrkel | Hacker News Reader

Do we really want to create a hierarchy of grief, to say other people's pain is invalid?

I know that losing a pet hurts a lot more than losing a grandparent or aunt or uncle when they're not ever-present in your life. I have not lost parents yet, but at this remove in my life they are in many ways just people I used to know - my personality and values are quite different to them and I find it hard to empathize with their life choices. I think losing them would be similar to losing the little kitten I reared from a few weeks old. The actual relationship with my parents is mostly dead already, because it's been decades since we were close.

It's not about losing a human Vs losing an animal. It's about losing a relationship that is part of your daily life.

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You already maintain a hierarchy of grief. If you found that a colleague was inconsolable because they'd snapped a nail, you'd judge them and respond differently than if their parent was dead. It's also not just based on how "normal" the grief is, there are plenty of very religious people who would be very upset at a relative being gay.

The question "do we want to maintain a hierarchy of grief" is absurd, there is not one human alive who doesn't already do that on some level.

Grief is subjective, there is no hierarchy, except for the individual.

A wise and correct perspective. Grief is an emotion and emotions are inherently subjective.

Our cat died two years ago and although we've had a few cats over the years, this cat was special. I was totally unprepared for the grief and pain that I, and the rest of my family members, experienced. I didn't feel like I could really even talk about it with people outside the family because it sounded ridiculous to so many people with the view of "it's just a cat!" But not this cat, and not to us.

My aunt died the same year. She was my mom's best friend and growing up I was at her house, hanging with my cousins, all the time. She was a total sweetheart: a kind, goodhearted, sweet woman with a heart of gold. When she passed I grieved, but although I feel genuinely ashamed to write this, the level of emotional intensity - the raw pain - did not reach the same level as when our cat died.

Grief over the loss of a beloved being does not come from a rational calculus of that being's worth.

I have found grief to be in direct proportion to the emotional dependence we have. A pet would have been more consistently there in times of emotional distress, while an aunt would not have been. It's not a question of animal vs. human, it's a question of which has more time and feeling invested, and humans tend to invest their emotions more in pets than each other so it hurts more when they're lost.

A counselor I saw once defined grief as love with nowhere to go. I think that connects well with what you suggest here.

I think a better example would be losing a partner vs losing a distant relative, snapping a nail sounds like apple and oranges.

Of course you maintain a heirarchy of grief, but it's your heirarchy - it's not a shared heirarchy where your loss of a close relationship is deigned less or greater than someone else's loss of a close relationship.

Grief is grief. What's at the top of your list might not be the top of someone elses. You don't invalidate someone else's grief because yours ranks higher on your own list.

There are kind of three questions: 1. how much is this person suffering 2. is their suffering "justified" 3. is their suffering the cause of their own actions (who is at fault) I and the poster are leaning towards the second and third question. And it's not at all a purely individual opinion (except in the sense that all opinions are), there are cases when we need to adjudicate it as a group - how much compensation do you get when someone does X vs Y. How much of a crime is it to call someone X vs calling them Y, that's more offense/being upset but this argument is the same for all emotions.

It's just a silly attempt to sidestep the argument.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. Maintaining some artificial hierarchy of grief (akin to 'but I loved mom more than you') is toxic at best.

I lost my dad at age 20 and in the months after was mostly surrounded by friends that had no idea what losing a parent felt like. In their attempts, I never felt I had the right to discredit their grief as being lesser, be it for an ex-girlfriend or a dog they grew up with.

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