Don’t. Let them sort it out. Just be there.

The most frustrating thing, as a person who has had losses in life of family and friends, is other people’s compulsion to try to force you to be happy or punish you for your grief. It also is clear they odn’t care about you, they just care about your grief affecting them in a way they don’t like.

Let people be sad. It’s normal, it’s healthy. Grief is normal and it can last for weeks or months or years.

What you are doing here is called catastrophizing, assuming their life will spiral into collapse over the loss of a pet. Stop it. It won’t. They will be sad for a week or few, and they will move on. Stop trying to control the situation and control your partner.

This post isn’t about you helping them it’s about you having anxiety over their grief not being in your control.

Everyone is different. Some people want space, some people need attention. The main thing is to ask them what they need.

Additionally, making sure they’re eating and drinking (water, not booze) is important too. Cook them a few meals. Remember, you’ll be grieving too, so don’t let helping your partner overwhelm you or override your own needs.

I’d ask a mutual friend (now) to check on you two, especially on the first day. Being around loved ones can be really helpful.

When I lost someone close to me, my wife hugged me while I cried. That was the best thing she could do. Being around family or friends also can be a good distraction, so you don’t get totally swallowed up by grief. You have to feel the sad feelings, but don’t let them consume you.

As for school, I don’t have any experience. I’d suggest maybe studying away from home, so they’re not reminded of the cat.

Good luck. You sound like a good partner, and a “helper”. From one helper to another: please don’t neglect yourself. Let yourself feel the feelings, bottling them isn’t healthy. Help your partner as best you can, but don’t be afraid to call in outside help.

Not only do you need to support your partner, you need to support yourself.

A support that is crumbling can do nothing in support.

That said, what I have always consoled myself with, especially with a pet, is knowing that they were happy being with me, for as long as they lived. We had so many fantastic and lovely memories together. What really matters is all the love and time you gave, not the short period at the end.

I have far too much experience with grieving personally. But, because of that, I can say people are giving you great advice OP. These are considered and thoughtful responses in this thread. Sometimes humans can be good to each other online.

“I’m sorry for what you’re going through. Shit sucks. And my heart goes to you.”

You can say that to her. But I’m saying that to you too.

I grew up in a household that told me to “walk it off”. At funerals, just a bunch of stiff lips. But when my wife’s cat died, I was ready to be like you. But my heart broke and I cried my ass off.

So how do you support them? Let everyone grieve. Take care of each other. Ask each other if they need anything. Check in with each other if you are ready for a walk, going out to eat, doing something “a bit” different to recover. Don’t try to “get back to normalcy”, because there’s no such thing. Your life changed. This is the new normal. And after all this, you both will become a little closer and a little stronger.

I lost 3 cats in ten years. Toxic masculinity or whatever, shit is always hard. I put on a face to make sure my wife and kids are taken care of first, of course. But I’m grieving too and they take care of me. Let them.

When I was grieving just having a person be present - who clearly explained that I didn’t have to talk to them, didn’t even have to acknowledge them, but they would be there present, with me, was extremely meaningful.

Obviously YMMV depending on your partner, but presence of soul and body has power.

Most of the support won’t be things you say, it’ll be things you do: a cup of tea and a blanket when they’re struggling. Making sure they eat regularly and healthfully. Putting your arms around them when they cry. Getting them out of the house to move their body. Finding the perfect sentiment is much less effective than a well-timed cupcake.

You hurt because you care. You care because you hurt.

You care about your cat, about your partner, and about your relationship. This is important to recognize. It’s important to give this its proper space, not minimizing it but also not making it define your life.

What I mean is that sometimes, our brain tells us things that are helpful and sometimes it tells us things that are unhelpful. Sometimes, our brain becomes a dictator. This dictator avoids pain at all costs. It looks at pain as something that needs to be solved.

Here’s the thing: emotional pain cannot be solved in the same way that physical pain can sometimes be solved. We can fix broken bones. We can heal skin wounds. But we cannot magically solve emotional pain. Why? Because we hurt where we care.

Here’s a way to look at emotional pain: would you want to be the kind of person that doesn’t feel pain when their loved ones die? I bet you wouldn’t. And that is human. It is a way of looking at emotional pain with dignity.

Here’s another way of giving some dignity to the pain of losing someone: humans hurt when loved ones leave because we have a yearning to belong. This is not even a cultural thing or otherwise a learned thing. It is pre-verbal. Grab a baby and look at its eyes, and its brain will be flooded with endorphins. We are wired for connection. Most mammals are too. And some mammals have specifically evolved to live with us. An example of this is your cat: it comes from a lineage that has learned to live with people.

So what can we do about this emotional pain? For one, being open to it and being aware of it. It is a part of your life and it is worth holding with dignity. You can look at this pain as if you were holding a delicate flower. What’s its shape? What’s its color? Its texture? Its inner consistency? Its power? This exercise helps with coming to terms with tough experiences. It helps us accept problems that can’t be solved.

You can also choose to actively engage with your life in a way that you find meaningful. What kind of person do you want to be? What do you want to stand for? How would you like to approach life? This puts you in the driver’s seat. And you will feel your emotions pulling you aside. They will tell you that you have to stop driving, that you have to solve problems that can’t be solved. Your dictator will not like the pain. And yet you can listen to your dictator talk in the copilot seat and choose to drive.

This is what grief sometimes looks like: emotions that come and sometimes overwhelm you. What I’m suggesting is that you can be open to them, be aware of them, and choose how you want to engage with life.

If you do this, your partner will notice. There are wild studies that show that psychologically flexible people are able to make others around them more psychologically flexible. It’s been measured in the context of traumatic experiences like pediatric surgery and natural disasters: parents who are psychologically flexible are a safety net for their children, and those kids are less likely to be traumatized and more likely to be psychologically flexible later in life.

What I’m saying is that you can model psychological flexibility and that will probably have an impact.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you’re interested in where my thinking comes from and I can point to some resources.

I’m sorry for the tough situation you’re in. Best of luck.

The best support you can give a grieving person is just being there for them. Sounds like a platitude but it is true. Because there is nothing you can actively do to make the pain go away, you can’t go around it, you have to go through it. And if the grief is for something or someone meaningful it will last. Some grief never goes away fully, you’ll just learn to live with it.

In 2018/19 I lost my uncle, my grandpa, my grandma and my dad, all within a couple of months. I still sometimes dream of my grandpa. I still sometimes think ‘oh I got to tell this to dad…oh wait.’. I still celebrate my dad’s birthday, alone with a photo of us and a piece of cake and some tears.

Show them you care, show them they can reach out to you, help them feel loved, help them to not feel alone with the pain. If the relationship was meaningful, help them to also make the good-bye meaningful.

I remember a lot from that period. That one friend who called every evening to just chat about whatever. That one friend who printed a photo of me and my dad they took a couple years back and gave it to me. My stepdad taking charge in clearing my dad’s apartment. My mom crying with me. My sisters and I sharing stories about our dad. That one friend who made a cake for my birthday after I cried about how I will never have grandma’s applepie ever again ‘i can’t imitate your grandma’s birthday pie but here is mine’. I cried so much about that cake, it was such a lovely gesture.

All those loving gestures helped immensely getting through it and I am grateful for every single one of those moments because they showed me I am not alone, I am loved. That’s all you can do. And it can mean the world.

That’s a lot of words already but I have some more to share. The day my dad died, my sister called me in bed ‘dad died’. I was like in a trance, I got up, got dressed, packed a bag, got on the train and drove to my hometown. I was completely numb. During the train ride I scrolled through Reddit and stumbled upon a comment by the user u/gsnow I will never forget. And it broke me, I was ugly crying on the train. And it has helped me so much ever since. I hope it helps you understand grief and how meaningful it can be.

Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents. I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gorged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see. As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive. In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life. Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out. Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

You have put a lot of thought already into the potential grief your partner will suffer, I’m sure you’ll do alright :)

Feel hugged stranger <3

Guy who lost their mum here. So many people told me how I should and shouldn’t feel. It annoyed the crap out of me. Let them know that how they feel is absolutely a valid and understandable way to feel. Do not try to correct them or change how they are - just tell them they are loved and you are there for them.

And whatever you do do not make them feel like their sadness is an inconvenience to you. I got that thrown at me quite a bit and it made me feel so much worse and stalled any attempt at mourning.

As someone who has had some very emotional partners, but rarely allows myself to become overly emotional, have tissue paper, a warming bottle or one of those heatable beanbags, and a listening ear ready. Expect to put a lot of time into sitting without doing anything. Grief can move slow and rushing it rarely works. Avoid alcohol and other inflammatories and depressants.