Think About It: The pain of loss is a shared experience

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, January 28, 2026

By Bertha D. Cooper

I intended to write about my reentry into Sequim life after my adventuresome trip to France and the newness I brought back with me. I will someday, but not now because unexpected life events interrupted the experience with enough volume to take my attention away from it to the fragility of life.

One was the death of a former colleague from an aggressive form of cancer that left little time for goodbyes. Another was the diagnosis of a similar cancer in a close male relative. Both good men leave loved ones breathless from bashed life dreams and an unrecognizable future.

Then as if I needed more to remind me that death in life is unrelenting, I received communication toward the end of my trip from my pet sitter that one of my cats, Maggie, was suffering from an untreatable condition.

The recommendation was to end her suffering. And there I was, in a country thousands of miles away from my sweet Maggie.

My heart and mind worked two directions. I felt outrage at the unfairness of being thousands of miles away and making great effort to extend my love to Maggie from afar.

I allowed the procedure with a heart heavy with sadness and substantial trust in the expertise and wisdom of Maggie’s caregivers. I am comforted that Maggie had a long and good life for a cat.

Too young, too soon

I cannot be comforted by the untimely death of a former colleague or the difficult path ahead for my relative, both much younger than I.

What is this lottery in life that determines that some will have more struggle than others or that some of us will live longer than others?

Scientists work relentlessly to determine the variables that impact our length of life. Smoke, don’t smoke, exercise daily or not.

My personal favorite and that of most is to possess genes of longevity heavily weighted by good health genes. Of course, we cannot control either.

Occasionally, we read about efforts around designing and producing the “perfect” human. What exactly would perfect entail?

I do not think we can try, nor do I think we should. It is our variety that makes life interesting and, I believe, contributes to human evolution. Besides, to try would be an exercise in futility partly because I do not think we will ever agree on who or what the “perfect” human is.

Over time nature and its evolution, with some influence by humans, will have the last word.

Living with loss

Meanwhile, we humans must suffer our losses. It is part of living. People like the family and friends of my colleague must experience the pain of his loss. I must feel the pain of losing my sweet Maggie.

I/we must feel the pain of knowing those who suffer and we are helpless to ease it, let alone share it in a meaningful way.

I know that so many suffer greater pain of loss than I have ever experienced. Yet, that understanding does not and cannot relieve our pain. We can balance, rationalize and explain our pain in attempts to ease our suffering.

Ultimately, trying to deny loss only leads us back to repeatedly facing the pain and sadness it brings. We cannot outrun it; we must recognize and accept the real pain that eventually becomes our teacher of values in life.

I am not writing anything that most of us do not know. Life can really hurt.

We lose human friends. We lose animal friends.

In the end it is a shared human experience.