I don't know. If you say you love your cat I'll take your word for it.

But you don't know how things affect him. What's there to be offended about? Some people find intentional abandonment worse than death. That's not questioning the profundity of other people's loss. Why do people want to have a monopoly on suffering?

You're right TH there is no comparison.. for you. I however, don't feel that way, and what I described is the primary factor when I get depressed. Death has never bothered me in the same way, there is nothing to be offended about, it's just how I'm wired. You don't ALWAYS have the chance to reconnect.. that's a bs statement.

Idk why some of you feel the need to tell others how they should feel about personal emotions.

I meant ... oh never mind.
Just how I feel. I don't think there's anything that can compare to losing your parents or loved ones for real. And when I said there's a chance, that's what I meant: there is always a chance. You don't know what will happen in the future. There's every possibility you may bump into or hear from this person again, whereas if they're dead that's not happening. Unless you're a psychic or possibly high I guess. I didn't say you WOULD reconnect with them, I said you had a CHANCE. And you do. You always do, until someone dies, then that chance is gone.

Nobody has a monopoly on suffering, but equating falling out with or losing touch with or even being abandoned, as you see it, by people, with actually losing someone from this Earth just seems like it's trivialising the loss of a loved one or friend to death. I know that's not how you intended it, but that's how it came across to me. I'm entitled to my opinion, you're entitled to yours. I'm entitled to tell you that something you said offended me, just as you're equally entitled to tell me to **** off. Which I'm sure you will. And which I will.

No there isn't. I'm sorry you can't comprehend that.

Nothing is being trivialized without the assumption that when someone speaks for themself they're also speaking for you or even for everybody.

I dislike when people speak as if there's universal truth about what's profound.

Example, you can't understand what it's like until you have a child.

For me it wouldn't mean ****. That's why I don't have one. I could go around telling people they'll never have the slightest clue what it means to understand Coltrane. I could imply their lives are obviously empty without Coltrane. I have no interest in projecting the intricacies of my experience as something that is or should be universal to all. I can hear their scoffs already. The absurdity that I love Coltrane's music more than a mother loves her own child. I could reply if you tended to your child the way I tended to my understanding of Coltrane your child wouldn't be under a viaduct shooting smack. But I keep that to myself. Maybe you see death as the ultimate loss because you've been sheltered from the horrors of other kinds of loss. Are you so certain that losing a parent to death is worse for EVERYONE than having a parent simply say **** you. I don't want you. No goodbye. Just gone. We can accept others' hardships as explained or put our grief on a measuring stick. When someone expresses what has and does grieve them personally unless they add and what hurts me would hurt you equally there's no reason to assume that's what's implied.

So you can predict the future now? Like, I couldn't say that someone I haven't spoken to for twenty years isn't somehow going to end up back in my life in some way. Probably won't happen, but there's absolutely no certainty that it won't. I'm sorry you can't comprehend that.
This would all be fine if he had not said "The real bitch is losing people who aren't dead". That implies that he thinks it's the same for everyone. I already said it's his opinion, and my opinion is it offends me. I'm offended, though not in any huge way. I mentioned it. I'm not going to take it back. I have lost more people over the years to know how it hurts like hell when someone dies on you, and for ME, there is no comparison. Didn't say there isn't for anyone else, but it doesn't stop me being offended that someone would make a comment of that nature.

He's entitled to feel whatever way he wants, so are you, just as I'm entitled to raise an objection. I'm not asking him, or you, to ratify or justify that objection, but it doesn't stop me having it, and voicing it.

I cried when my old cat got put to sleep. Had him for 18 years. He was an absolute c*nt to everyone else but he seemed to like me. Used to corner my wife and try to take her down like a buffalo. Little psycho, lol. Whenever he tried **** like that with me I stood up to him and chased him out of the house. I think he respected me for that.

He sounds like the kind who'd want to go down in a blaze of glory. Did he go down in a blaze of glory?

No 'fraid not. Found him in the driveway half-paralysed dragging himself along by his front legs. I thought he might have been hit by a car as his legs were kind of torn up but I took him to the vet and they reckoned it was more likely a clot in his spine. Anyway a few days of treatment at the vets and he was just getting worse and miserable so made the hard call to put him down. I patted him as he passed away and he was growling at the vet. The growling slowly faded and he was gone and I cried like a baby. Poor old fella.

Oh man. I was driving one day and the car in front of my stopped short. Turns out the car in front of him hit a cat that was trying to get across the road. I know this because after traffic started to move, I saw the cat crawling with his front two legs like you just described but his back legs were f*cked. I felt so bad. The little critter most likely died in a great deal of pain. I almost stopped to try to find out whose cat it belonged to but I I decided seeing other people that upset would probably kill me so I kept driving. Somebody that night couldn't find their pet and had to walk out to that. Sad.