A recently widowed woman wondered if she was wrong for calling out her sister’s endless “grief comparisons.”
A Death In The Family
The woman lost her husband only a month ago. “It’s hard, I’m still grieving and I miss him every day. I have to take medication for depression and anxiety to help me get through the day.”
Her Sister’s Dog Passed Away
She was incredibly close to her pet and was beside herself. “Last week, my sister’s dog was put down due to some health issues and she was very upset, which is understandable. She called me as soon as it happened and said I was the only sibling who would understand her pain”
At First, It Was Okay
Initially, the comparison didn’t bother her – until it became a daily thing. “I didn’t mind; honestly, I just wanted to comfort her since her dog meant the world to her. She held a wake for him, and our whole family attended. It was a nice service. But now, she’s comparing our losses. Telling me she knows exactly what I’m going through. That she can relate to the pain of losing someone so close to you.”
Extreme Grief
The woman is trying to cope with her own loss, as well as her sister’s. “She calls me asking if we should visit graves together. It was fine the first time but it’s constant. She goes 3 times a day. It’s already difficult to go once a week for me and she knows this. I feel like she’s not even considering my own grief process.”
She Eventually Snapped
She’d had enough of the comparisons. “I told her that grieving her dog is not the same as grieving my husband. She’s upset and refusing to talk to me now. I get it, it was uncalled for, really. But my loss is new to me, too, and I guess I just got frustrated with how different we’re dealing with our losses. Idk, I feel like she should understand where I’m coming from too.”
Not The Same Thing
The woman doesn’t believe the losses are equal. “A dog is not the same as a husband. A dog can’t love you back like a husband can. A dog can’t read to your children like a husband can. A dog can’t make soup when you’re ill like a husband can.”
She Doesn’t Know What To Do
The woman admits her mind is a little addled from the medication and her grief. “It’s really hard for me right now to discern when I’m being condescending or not. Idk if it’s a side effect of my medication or if the empathetic part of my brain has shut down. But I really am getting tired of her comparing our pain when she lost her dog and I lost my world. At the very least, she still has her husband.”
At A Loss At What To Do
She thinks her sister is being unreasonable. “I have two young children at home, processing a loss unimaginable to most kids their age. And she’s trying to whisk me away to graveyards to visit her dog.” So she asked an online community what their thoughts were.
Users Cast Their Vote
They agreed that she wasn’t wrong. One person said: “I am not going to be too mean to your sister, but she is being wrong here. Not just because dogs live shorter lives than humans, so it is more expected, not just that, no matter how much we love animals, humans > other animals, but also because you can’t necessarily compare grief in the first place. Some people are comforted by sharing similar experiences; some people find it pushy, and if you start doing that and the other person doesn’t like it, you stop.”
Grief Can Be Very Dividing
Users shared similar experiences. “My stepmom died two years ago and my step-sister had a hard time understanding that not everyone grieved like she did. She was driving 3-hour round trips weekly to visit the grave, sleeping with a picture of her mum, etc, none of which is wrong, but she was trying to push her sister and me into joining her and losing it when we didn’t. I didn’t grow up with her, so of course, my relationship with her is different but she couldn’t understand it.”
It’s Unfair To Compare Such Things
“She seems to believe that because she’s lost a (obviously very loved) dog, she understands your grief fully. Which she doesn’t. I get it, she wants comfort, but it seems like all the comfort she’s getting from sharing whatever grief they both have is actually just compounding and worsening OP [original poster]’s grief, and the sister doesn’t seem to realize that.”
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