Being Together Separately: Showing Compassion for Individual Loss - A Hippo Essay

By Miranda Workman

July 13, 2019

We are here, together, in this group because of the loss of our hippos due to a choice made to euthanize them rooted in behavior concerns. Many of us here on Losing Lulu have experienced various kinds of grief in our lifetimes in addition to the loss of our hippos. We have lost not only individuals, whether human, non-human, or otherwise, but we also lost the relationships we shared with those who are no longer with us. When a relationship – a shared experience – ends, we grieve that emptiness on the other end of that relationship.

As a researcher who has immersed myself in works – from empirical to philosophical – on death and grieving, I hope to share some of what I have learned with all of you. In addition, I have expertise in family and environmental sociology that speaks to this confluence of loss.

Each of our losses affect each individual in very individual ways. Therefore, I am going to ask that you #keepitkind as you read about grief. This is a very painful and delicate topic. This is a complex topic with many sides and many faces. It is complicated. It is hard, but I believe those of us here can try to understand all the challenges loss and grief lays at our feet – individually and socially.

It is important to understand that we are all at different points in our individual grief journeys. Some of us feel the sting of recent loss. Some of us feel that sting the same many years later. For some of us, the grief on the day we lost our loved one has transitioned over time. For some of us, there is someone else who also lost the same individual, but who had a very different and unique relationship they shared. There is no way to compare any individual loss to another because the relationships, even with the same individual, are vastly different.

For example, my husband and I have both lost individuals, some have been hippos, with whom we each had our own unique, individual relationships. Although, we lost the same individual, the relationships we lost with that singular individual were very different. So different that it is useless to compare the loss of my relationship to the loss of his relationship. The pain of those losses for him are different from that pain for me. Who that individual was to me in our relationship is in no way the same – or even remotely similar – to who that individual was to my husband in their relationship. So…grief is more than losing an individual, it is also about losing a relationship.

And thus, the first challenge is defining our relationships with those whom we have lost. This is where language begins to complicate our ability to understand one another. On Losing Lulu we share some version of the English language in our communications. Thus, I will be speaking mostly about the English language.

Our most intimate relationships with other humans are defined by words that evoke the idea of family. Family however is an incredibly complicated concept! For some family is defined by biological relatedness. For others, it is defined less by biology and more by individuals with whom they share relationships rich with loyalty, dependence, and social support among other characteristics. For some, only humans are capable of filling the role of family. For others, all animals and even plants or technology can be family.

The English language is weak in its ability to eloquently express our relationships with non-humans. Therefore, we often reach for words that express the intimacy we share with those individuals with some of the most intimate relationships we know as humans – words about family. Research shows that individuals who try to explain their relationship with non-humans know they are not human, but do not have appropriate language to describe the relationship they have. This is why we reach for words like “furbaby,” “foster parent,” and “family” to describe those relationships. We simply don’t have the words – so we reach for the closest available concepts that most often are words about familial relationships.

John Dewey, an early 20th century philosopher describes the experience that is unable to be expressed by words as “ineffable.” Words are weak tools in comparison to the strength of our unique, shared experience with the individual we have lost. In fact, in Dewey’s shadow, a wise man once said to me that when trying to explain our individual experiences (especially about strong emotional connections we have now lost) with others – words can only do violence to the indescribable, the ineffable, experience.

What is interesting about this is that many of us have an idea of what “family” is at the societal level. On the individual level, who I define as *my* family is often at odds with our societal-level concepts defining family. This is where some of the friction about our relationships can be identified. The roles we play on a societal level – father, partner, child, friend, companion, etc. – are not synonymous with the unique relationships we share – one-on-one. The experience of our relationships with others are not determined by, but may be influenced by, our societal-level roles within those relationships.

This is why comparisons of roles between individuals in a relationship (the awkward comparison of child and animal) are hurtful. It can be a monumental kindness to try to separate out the societal-level categorizations from the individual-level relationships. If we can’t even use language to do justice to the strength and beautiful diversity of the relationships shared, there is no way to categorize those relationships with any accuracy. Comparisons – whether expressed (directly or implicitly) by the author of the words or assumed by the reader of those words – devalue all our grief and only add to our pain. I humbly suggest that we all try very hard to write and read kindly while recognizing the unique and individual experience regardless of how we describe the roles we embodied in those relationships. I can only try express what my experience is *for me*. Know that it doesn’t reflect on nor is in comparison to what your experiences are *for you*.

This leads to the next challenge: sharing our grief about our experiences in individual relationships we can’t truly explain with our language. The challenge is trying to find the “shared, common ground” in our individual, unique experiences that are all valid. To support one another, we have to try to share our experiences. This is where another area of friction occurs. What provides solace to one individual as they wade through the gentle flow of their river of grief can feel like a grief ambush to another sweeping them away over Niagara Falls.

I suggest that we can find that “shared, common ground” in the fact that we are even a member of the Losing Lulu Facebook page. Normative losses – those losses that are expected in the normal course of a life (like losing a parent in death) – has all kinds of rituals available in every culture that provide for social support for such a loss. Those losses are “grievable” according to society.

Grieving the loss of a hippo is still invisible to society in many ways. For example, there is no concept of bereavement leave at most workplaces when you lose a hippo – even if it was an expected death due to old age or a chronic illness. There is no structure to provide social support for caregivers of ailing hippos. We simply don’t have good society-level structures for acknowledging the loss of our hippos – and especially our ineffable relationships with them.

Choosing to euthanize an animal for behavior concerns is an especially non-normative loss. When choosing to take the life of your hippo society often denies you the right to grieve the loss of that individual and the relationship you shared with them. You are not allowed to grieve when you are the individual who is ultimately responsible for your hippo’s death. When you have nowhere to access social support for your grief then you are experiencing what researcher Kenneth Doka describes as “disenfranchised grief.”

To be disenfranchised means to be denied a right. Behavioral euthanasia of our hippos is only one of countless types of losses that are “not grievable.” How do we know they are not grievable? Society provides no social support for those who are grieving such losses. They are forced to suffer in silence, doubly traumatized by the loss itself (of the individual and the relationship) and the lack of support. And thus, grief is both individually experienced and socially sanctioned (or not) – much like our concepts of family.

In summary, this is complicated, and complex and emotionally risky territory. The challenge we all face as individuals sharing unique relationships with another within a larger society is in sharp relief here on Losing Lulu. Sharing our grief socially does not mean in any way that we equate our individual grieving journey with another’s, but we can acknowledge and bear witness to our individual pain due to our individual losses in a community as loving and supportive and safe as Losing Lulu. Here, no grief is disenfranchised.

Peace and love to you all as you navigate your rivers of grief – individually and together.

The picture below is of Sherlock, my Russell Terrier mix who is, for me, a family member. He is conflicted about rivers – well, any large body of water really. This picture shows Sherlock about 10 years ago contemplating how to navigate a small river while our multi-specied family was on a canoe daytrip in Ontario, Canada. He didn’t enjoy the river or canoeing, but he did enjoy stealing hamburgers off the grill from a group of teenagers as he ran across the land while my husband and I carried our canoe from one lake to another.