E18: The Empty Carrier (Reflecting On Another Kind Of Loss)

Today's episode reflects on a different kind of loss: pet loss. In this experience, putting down my cat became the gateway to connecting with different aspects of baby loss.

Lucky, my cat, was part of our home’s heartbeat, and the speed of his decline shook me more than I expected. From the first signs something was wrong to the vet’s clarity about kidney failure, I reflect on the moment love translates into action that still hurts.

Grief gets loud in small bodies and in adult bodies too, and the goodbye at the vet, the empty carrier on the way home, and the broken routines afterward all left marks. That silence in the house became a mirror, reflecting something I've seen for years in baby loss and miscarriage grief, especially for dads trying to stay steady while their insides shift.

This reflection is careful about comparisons while still taking grief seriously. It explores why “ranking” pain can be a way to avoid it, how bereavement can connect one loss to another without asking permission, and why grief does not need to be perfectly explained before it deserves attention. 

If you’re a grieving father, or you love one, you’ll find language here for the quiet parts: the empty spaces, the objects that sting, and the love that stays present even when the routine is gone. If this resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more grieving dads can find support.

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Theme Music: "Love Letter” was created using AI as a creative tool, with lyrics and direction shaped by the personal experiences and emotional intent of the host.

Show Music from Soundstripe

God Remembers by Anthony Catacoli

Transcript

Opening And Request For Context

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today's episode is a brief reflection on something my family and I recently experienced together. Before any conclusions are drawn, I invite you to listen fully through the entire episode in order to have the proper context. And as always, thank you for listening to April twenty-ninth, my family and I made the heartbreaking decision to put down one of our cats. His name was Lucky. Lucky came to us as a kitten just a few weeks after my wife and I got married. She sent me a picture of him one day, and what I saw was a tiny body, huge ears, big expressive eyes, white and golden tan fur. The kind of face that looked innocent and guilty at the exact same time. Before we eventually brought him home, I could already see the kind of personality this cat had. And as a newlywed husband, I eventually did what many newlywed husbands eventually do. And so I gave in and we brought him home. At the time, our family was my wife's dog, Benji, who has since passed away, my cat, Jackpot, my wife, and me. And so we decided to name him Lucky in order to keep with the gambling theme due to my cat Jackpot's name, even though we are not a gambling family. And you know, Lucky lived up to his name. He was loving and caring, but he was also curious, persistent, vocal, and mischievous. He had a way of inserting himself into the room like he belonged at the epicenter of whatever was happening. And he was especially good with children. When my kids and my nephews would chase him and hug him and bother him and even try to ride him like a horse, he never hissed or retaliated at them. He simply took it in. And honestly, he seemed to enjoy that type of attention. As a pet, life was simple for Lucky. As long as he had a bowl of water and his kibbles, a clean litter box, which he would tell you about if the litter box was not clean, his special treat every Friday night, and cuddles. Lots and lots of cuddles. As long as he had those things, Lucky was fine. And recently, all of a sudden, Lucky lost a lot of weight. At first, when I noticed it, I tried to explain it away. I thought that maybe he was starving for affection I had not been giving him enough of lately. I even thought that maybe it was something that he ate because he had this custom of eating and biting off chunks of the trash bag. And so I thought maybe he ate a chunk of the plastic bag because you know that was the kind of ridiculousness that he would do. But then his energy started to fade. Almost every morning after five, Lucky had this habit of jumping over a protective gate that we have at the top of the stairs from when my kids were babies, and I could hear the thump of his paws against the hardwood floor. That sound meant that the day was starting, and it became part of the rhythm of the house. But as he got thinner, those thumps became more infrequent. He spent more time downstairs away from us and less time in the middle of everything which was not like him. And then his eyes began to dim. And that was the moment we knew that something was terribly wrong. So after getting some blood work, it showed that his kidneys had stopped working, and his condition was beyond any meaningful intervention. The doctor was clear but gentle and direct. We had a devastating decision to make. So my wife and I talked about it, and we talked about what needed to be done. In one sense, the decision was obvious, and in another sense, there was nothing easy about it. And the hardest part was not deciding what had to happen. The hardest part was knowing that we had to tell our boys. So that day after speaking to my wife and after getting home from work, we started to get ready to take Lucky to the vet. There was this heavy feeling in the house, this quiet understanding that we were leaving with him, but we were not coming back with him. Lucky had been with us for eight years, longer than I have been a dad. I took it upon myself to talk to my boys. I told them plainly that Lucky was dying and that we would not bring him back home, in those exact words. My six-year-old understood immediately and he started crying, which made my wife and I break down with him. My youngest, he understood in his own three-year-old way, and almost immediately he started meowing in solidarity with Lucky, who at the time could barely meow anymore. That moment is going to stay with me forever. Soon after arriving at the vet, they took us into a private room, and the staff told us that we could take as much time with Lucky as we needed. But we ended up not taking that much time at all. And it's not because we didn't love him, because we did, but because his eyes, his eyes told us we were already on borrowed time. So a couple of minutes after the staff left, we called them back in. And so the doctor came in to administer the medication. She explained to us what was going to happen, and then she asked us if we wanted to hold him. So we held Lucky, we cuddled him, we kissed him, we thanked him, we cried, we told him we loved him, and then he died. Coming home without him felt strange. Wrong even. First, you gotta pet me, and then you gotta feed me. The first Friday after he died, I opened only one can of special treats for Jackpot, and that broke my heart more than I expected. It took several weeks for me to finally move Lucky's bowl of kibbles and his bowl of water that were in the basement right where he last ate from them. Now, you may be wondering, why am I talking about putting my cat down on a podcast about baby loss? And I want to be careful here. It's not because I considered Lucky one of my children. I didn't. He was my pet, a loved pet, a member of the household, a real part of our family rhythm, but not my child. He was my pet. And I'm not placing the loss of an animal and the loss of a baby on the same scale. I know better than that. And there are very important differences. I've said before that every baby loss context has its own nuance. For instance, my personal experience is miscarriage. That is the context I know from the inside. That is the grief that shaped me as a father and eventually led to dad always. But I don't know what it's like to come home to see an empty nursery. I don't know what it's like to see an empty car seat and an empty stroller and feel your body reject the reality of it. I don't know what it's like to stand in a house that no longer feels like home because the baby who was supposed to live there never came through the door. I also don't know what it's like to tell living children that their baby brother or baby sister is never coming home. I don't know what it's like to celebrate a baby shower one day and plan for a funeral the next while still receiving gifts from the baby registry. And I will never pretend that I know those things, but something about Lucky's death hit me in an unexpected way. Watching how quickly he declined, finding odd the diagnosis, making the last drive to the vet, holding him while he died, and returning home with an empty carrier, it touched a place in me I was not expecting. Not on the same scale, but in a real way. It put me for a moment on the other side of something I had witnessed many times in my years as a chaplain in a pediatric hospital. Because I've stood outside rooms and heard the wailing of parents who were completely powerless to stop what was happening. I've seen moms and dads look at a reality they didn't ask for and could not bargain their way out of. I have seen dads go quiet because fear, guilt, anger, helplessness were all fighting for space inside their bodies at the same time. And being with Lucky as he died brought some of those memories back. It reminded me that grief does not always ask for permission before connecting one lost to another. Sometimes the death in front of you brings back the death you've witnessed. Sometimes the empty carrier in your hand gives you just enough of a framework to better honor the empty arms someone else is carrying. That is what this did for me. It reminded me not to flatten grief and not to compare losses as if pain is a competition, and not to pretend I understand what I have not personally lived. But also, it reminded me not to ignore the way grief can make us more tender, more honest, and more aware. And for dads especially, I think we often try to manage grief by ranking it. We tell ourselves that it could be worse, or that perhaps other people have been through more, or that some way, somehow, we should not be feeling the impact of the loss so deeply. And sometimes that becomes another way of avoiding what is true. The truth is, grief does not need to be the worst grief imaginable in order to deserve your attention, and it does not need to outrank someone else's pain in order to be real. And it certainly does not need to be perfectly explained before it's allowed to affect you. Again, Lucky was not my child, but he was part of my home. He was part of my family's daily rhythm. He was part of my children's entire world, he was part of our mornings, our Fridays, our noise, our movement, our small routines. And now there is a void and a silence where his life used to be. And that silence matters. And in sitting with that silence, I found myself thinking again about the dads who come home after baby loss. The dads who look around and realize the house is still standing, but something sacred has collapsed inside of it. The dads who are trying to be strong for their partner, who are trying to be gentle with their children, who are trying to be steady at work, and somehow still human under the weight of all of it. The dads who may not have language yet, the dads who may not cry in front of everyone, but still feel the loss in their chest, in their stomach, and their sleep, their temper, and their body. The dads who are carrying empty carriers of their own, and maybe not literal ones, but emotional ones, symbolic ones, the kind no one else can see. So this episode is really not about comparing pet loss to baby loss. It is about what grief teaches us when we are willing to pay attention. And it's about the way love leaves evidence in rooms we avoid and sounds we still listen for, and names we still say, in the routines that suddenly feel incomplete. And maybe most of all, it's about remembering that grief is not weakness, but the cost of connection. It means that something mattered. It means that someone matters. It means that a life mattered. And for the dads listening who are grieving a baby, let me be very plain about this. You do not need to justify why it still hurts. You do not need to make your grief more acceptable by explaining it perfectly. And you certainly do not need to compare your loss to someone else's before you give yourself permission to feel it. Because your baby mattered, because your fatherhood matters, because your grief matters, and even when the house feels different, and even when the silence is loud, and even when the thing you keep reaching for is no longer there. What is present and persistent is the love that you have for your baby. A love changed, yes, painful 100%, but it's there and it's present. That is part of what it means to be a dad after loss. And that is why I keep making room for this grief. Not because we're trying to stay broken, but because your love and my love deserves a place to go. Before moving on with your day, if this episode met you somewhere unexpected, do something to recalibrate yourself and then progress through your day as needed. Again, thank you so much for listening to this brief reflection, and I'll see you in the next episode.