When My Child Dies, the World Ends

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

On loving animals in a world that refuses to take that love seriously

There is a particular kind of grief that has no language in public life. It is a grief that is often minimised, politely ignored, or brushed aside with well-meaning but hollow phrases. It is the grief of losing an animal you love not as a possession, not as a companion, but as a child.

My dogs are my children.

I do not say this metaphorically. I say it as a lived truth. I cannot have children of my own, and the love that might have gone into raising a human life has found its home in them — in their care, their safety, their health, their fears, their joys, and their complete dependence on me.

They matter to me more than any human being in my life. This is not a comparison I arrived at casually, and it is not something I say to shock or provoke. It is simply how my heart is structured. They are my heart and soul. When one of them dies, it is not a chapter closing. It is my world crashing.

This is where most people stop understanding.

We live in a world that insists on hierarchies of worth. At the top stands the human being — rational, vocal, educated, entitled. Beneath us, everything else exists to serve, support, or be sacrificed. This belief is so deeply embedded that it is rarely questioned, even when it causes immense suffering. Animals are expected to endure quietly, to disappear quietly, and when they die, for the humans who loved them to “move on” quickly and without fuss.

But animals do not have voices. They do not have free will in the way humans do. They cannot leave bad situations, argue for their rights, seek therapy, or explain their pain. They love unconditionally, without strategy or self-interest. Their dependence is total. And it is precisely this dependence that creates a bond unlike any other.

Human beings can choose whether or not to love us back. Animals do not calculate. They give themselves entirely.

I have attended many funerals in my life. I have lost human family members I loved deeply. In those moments, the compassion I received was immense and generous, and I am grateful for it. Society understands human grief. It knows the rituals, the condolences, the appropriate responses.

But when one of my dogs dies — when my child dies — the response is different. Muted. Awkward. Sometimes absent. There is an unspoken assumption that this loss is somehow smaller, less legitimate, less deserving of space.

I understand that not everyone shares my relationship with animals. I do not expect people to feel what I feel. I do not expect constant presence, elaborate gestures, or performative sympathy.

What I do expect is consideration and understanding.

Friendship, to me, is not just about shared laughter or history. It is about knowing what the other person values, what holds their life together, what breaks them when it is taken away. If someone says they care about me, then they should know that my dogs are not peripheral to my life — they are my life.

When that understanding is missing, I notice. And something shifts.

This is not about punishment or resentment. It is about clarity. Loss has a way of revealing people — not their cruelty, necessarily, but their limits. And once you see those limits, you cannot unsee them. I cannot feel the same depth of connection with someone who dismisses or minimises the deepest grief I am capable of experiencing.

In recent times, we have seen institutions decide the fate of countless animals while framing the issue entirely around human inconvenience and human suffering. The irony is staggering. Humans, for all our flaws, have agency. Animals do not. Yet it is always animals who are expected to pay the price for human failure, fear, and neglect.

For me, love does not operate on a species hierarchy. Grief does not recognise one either.

When my dog dies, I am not losing “just an animal”. I am losing a child I raised, protected, worried over, and loved every single day. I am losing a being who trusted me completely in a world that often does not deserve that trust.

And if that truth makes people uncomfortable, so be it. My grief does not exist to be convenient. My love does not exist to be explained away.

This is not a demand for understanding. It is a statement of who I am — and how I love.

After Everyone Leaves

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia2 Comments

When the funeral is over, and the house finally empties of people, grief does something cruel and ordinary at the same time. Life resumes. Chores return. The day demands to be lived — and that is when the absence announces itself.

Not in grand ways. In small, brutal details.

The food bowls are the first thing I notice. I used to juggle three every day. Now I carry two, one in each hand, and my body still prepares for the weight of the third. Muscle memory has not yet learnt loss.

In the corner of the room, his mattress sits unused. The edges are stiff with dried drool — the very drool everyone used to shy away from. Zach was intensely affectionate. He loved with his whole body. And yet, visitors would dodge him, hold their clothes away, laugh nervously.

“Zach, sit down.”

“Zach, go away.”

He never understood why love had conditions.

The medicine chart still hangs on the fridge — morning, afternoon, night — followed meticulously, desperately, faithfully. A quiet record of how hard we tried. His leash hangs with the others, but his remains vacant. I notice the name tag first. Zachary. Still there. Waiting.

Then comes the first midnight walk without him.

We step out as a family, no one leaving anyone alone. The girls walk beside me, steady and present, as if they instinctively know that this is not a walk — it is an endurance test. I see the spot where Zach always stopped to pee. He took his time. He ambled. He was a big boy. He occupied space without apology.

And now that space is painfully, offensively empty.

I don’t have many grand things to say about our relationship, except this: I loved him. Fiercely. Quietly. In the way fathers often do with sons. It wasn’t demonstrative. It wasn’t dramatic. But it was solid.

Nothing like my relationship with my own father — because Zach always looked to me for help, for reassurance, for safety. And I always told him the same thing: I’ve got your back.

I used to sing to him —

You’re my honey bunch, sugar plum, pimply imply umpkin —

and he would come charging towards me, tail wagging wildly, a weapon that bruised shins and toppled objects. Love, again, without restraint.

The house feels hollow now. Zach was a large presence — lumbering, filling up rooms, claiming corners, leaning his weight into life. The gentlest boxer dog. The sweetest. And according to everyone in the family, one of the most handsome dogs they had ever seen.

He knew my aunts.

He lived through Covid with me.

He witnessed deaths.

He stood beside me through grief before becoming its centre.

He was my baby.

My baby boy.

And he has taken a piece of my heart with him.

People often talk about grief as something that arrives suddenly, but this grief has been rehearsed for months. Living with two terminally ill dogs teaches you anticipatory mourning — the long, slow exhaustion of loving while preparing to lose. And yet, when the moment finally comes, it still catches you unprepared.

Condolences arrive. Kind words follow death easily. But the real work of grief happens afterwards — when no one is watching, when the house is quiet, when memory ambushes you in ordinary moments.

These memories will keep jolting me as the days go on. I know this. I have seen enough death to know that time dulls the sharpest edges. Pain becomes a low ache. Survivable. Livable.

But not yet.

Right now, I am grief-stricken.

Right now, I am wracked with pain.

Right now, love has nowhere to go.

And so it lingers — in empty bowls, unused leashes, dried drool, midnight walks, and a father that remembers him even when the world moves on.

I Will Never Ask for Help. But I Will Remember Who Offered.

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I have learnt something about grief that no book, no well-meaning quote, and no condolence message ever teaches you.

When death finally arrives, people show up. Messages pour in. Words of sympathy arrive from corners you didn’t even expect to remember you. “So sorry for your loss.” “Heartbreaking.” “Sending love.” And I am grateful for every single one of them. Truly.

But grief does not begin at death.

Grief begins long before — in the months when you are carrying the unbearable quietly.

For months, I have been living with two terminally ill dogs. Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Literally. With medication schedules that rule the clock. With hospital visits that fracture sleep. With anxiety that sits in the body like a permanent ache. With fear that never quite leaves the room, even on good days.

I spoke about it. I posted about it. I did not cloak it in poetry or optimism. I said plainly: this is hard. This is exhausting. This is breaking me in ways I didn’t anticipate.

And that is where the silence lived.

Very few texted to ask, “Are you managing today?”

Very few dropped by unannounced, just to sit on the floor and see the reality.

Very few said, “Can I take one thing off your plate?”

Very few said, “You don’t have to talk — I just want to be there.”

Just a handful. A precious, unforgettable handful. Thanks, Christina, Anil, Madhvi, Jatin, Husain, Priti.

They didn’t ask for permission to care. They didn’t wait for tragedy to be official. They came when things were messy, unresolved, ongoing. When there was nothing to mourn publicly yet, and no neat ending to respond to.

That is what I will remember.

Because help that arrives after loss is kind — but help that arrives during suffering is love.

We live in a world that is comfortable with outcomes, not processes. Death makes sense to people. It has language. It has rituals. It has scripts. Long-term caregiving, anticipatory grief, emotional depletion — these things make people uncomfortable. They don’t know what to say, so they say nothing. They don’t know what to do, so they disappear.

And I understand that too. I really do.

But understanding doesn’t erase the knowledge that settles in your bones when you realise how alone endurance can be.

I have learnt that asking for help is not natural to everyone. For some of us, it feels like exposure. Like burdening. Like weakness. So we don’t ask. We speak honestly and hope that someone listening will hear the invitation between the lines.

Sometimes they do.

Most times, they don’t.

And that is life.

Zach is gone now. And yes — the messages have come. The kindness has come. The sympathy has come. I receive it with grace.

But what stays with me are the names of the people who showed up when there was nothing to say sorry for yet. When there was only tiredness. Only fear. Only a house holding too much.

Those are the people grief reveals.

I will never ask for help.

But I will always remember who offered.

And I will carry that knowledge forward — quietly, without bitterness — knowing exactly how I want to be when someone else is surviving something long, invisible, and unbearably human.