CBR18 Bingo – Repair is one way to think about grief. Or not. And if not, it’s what society needs to properly allow for human grief.
All my dead cats and other losses: practicing good grief in a culture that fears mourning by s. e. smith says it’s not just about dead cats. It has a lot of dead cats though.
The author uses the cats in their life to discuss grief and mourning in and out of society’s accepted grief borders – specifically, North American white protestant-ish capitalist society.
With these cats smith loved, they discuss:
- Children and death, which makes a lot of people very uncomfortable – usually to the detriment of the grieving child;
- Anticipatory grief;
- Sudden and unexpected death;
- Guilt;
- Witness, which is not easy to summarize. It covers smith’s time volunteering at an animal shelter, it discusses how traumatic working at an animal shelter is, and how judgemental and watchful people are about animal deaths and euthanasia;
- Performance, permitted grief timelines, and acceptable behavior during grief;
- Disenfranchised grief, which can push people to Am I the Asshole? on Reddit;
- Euthanasia, including the densest portion on disability and human rights;
- And finally prolonged grief disorder, which I’d never heard of. As smith describes it, the disorder is grieving past the DSM-5’s timer.
I’m familiar enough with death and grief, but it was good to see it presented as it was. I had a lot of reactions that left me exhausted, curious, and self-righteous. I don’t have much else to say without oversharing, but I’m happy I read it.
However, it didn’t have any cat pictures.
