Still With Us: Living With Anticipatory Grief (and Not Losing Yourself Along the Way)

​There’s a particular kind of grief that doesn’t arrive with a single moment or a clear beginning. It settles in quietly while life is still happening — while meals are still being eaten, routines kept, naps taken in familiar spots. It shows up when you love an animal whose future feels fragile, unpredictable, or medically uncertain.

This is called anticipatory grief, and it’s far more common among pet caregivers than we tend to acknowledge. It’s grief that runs alongside devotion. Love with a constant asterisk. Joy that sometimes comes with a hitch in its breath.

​If that sounds familiar, you’re not imagining it — and you’re not doing anything wrong.

The Future is Always Uncertain — But This is Different

It’s true that none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. But living with a chronically ill or aging pet introduces a different kind of uncertainty — one that doesn’t stay abstract or philosophical. It’s intimate. Daily. Physical.

This uncertainty shows up in vet visits, medication schedules, subtle changes in appetite or energy. It asks you to pay attention in ways others don’t have to. Love becomes paired with responsibility, and awareness turns into vigilance. Over time, that vigilance doesn’t just live in your thoughts — it settles into your body.

This is where anticipatory grief starts to feel less like an emotion and more like a state of being.

What Anticipatory Grief Does to the Brain (a very human explanation)

​Anticipatory grief is closely tied to anxiety — not because you’re pessimistic or “expecting the worst,” but because your brain is doing exactly what it evolved to do: protect what matters.

When the future feels unstable, the nervous system shifts into a prolonged state of alert. The brain’s threat-detection systems stay active, scanning for signs of change or danger. The amygdala (which processes fear and emotional significance) becomes more reactive, while the parts of the brain responsible for calm reasoning and emotional regulation work overtime trying to hold conflicting truths at once: they’re okay right now and this could change at any time.

That kind of sustained uncertainty is exhausting.

It can affect sleep, concentration, patience, and even your ability to enjoy good days without guilt. You may feel anxious without knowing why, emotionally thin for no obvious reason, or oddly disconnected during moments you wish you could fully savor. This isn’t weakness — it’s a nervous system that’s been asked to stay “on” for a very long time.

​Understanding this doesn’t make anticipatory grief disappear, but it can make it gentler. It helps shift the question from “Why can’t I handle this better?” to “What does my nervous system need right now?”

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Poppy and Fergus. Living in their ordinary moment.

Living Well Without Living Ahead of Yourself

One of the hardest parts of anticipatory grief is how easily it pulls us into the future—into imagined endings, timelines, and what-ifs. And while some degree of planning and awareness is necessary, living too far ahead can quietly steal the life that’s still unfolding right in front of you.

For me, that realization came slowly and imperfectly, over nearly a decade.
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Both of my boys were diagnosed with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy when they were still very young. HCM is a brutally frustrating disease that affects far too many cats. It is often silent, frequently undetected until late stages of heart failure or sudden death. It is unpredictable—sometimes stalling for years, sometimes progressing slowly, sometimes changing course without warning. There is no cure, no prevention, no treatment for the disease itself. Only intervention once symptoms appear—if you catch them in time.

And so began the internal torment of knowing their lives would likely be shortened, paired with the quiet loneliness of carrying that knowledge while, to everyone else, they “seemed fine.” Alongside that came regular visits to their cardiologist, who became a lifeline of sorts for me. The goal was never to fix what couldn’t be fixed, but to stay ahead of progression—catching changes early enough to manage symptoms and, if possible, spare them from what is often a sudden and traumatic end.

I lived in intervals: six months, then four, between echocardiograms and cardiology workups. A few weeks before each appointment, I would start holding my breath. Those weeks were filled with a level of anxiety that’s hard to describe. In the early years, I would sit in the car with them, rehearsing how I might react if I received bad news, tucking tissues into my bag just in case. Over time, I realized those appointments were as much therapy sessions for me as they were medical care for them. I had found someone who not only understood animals, but understood the depth of love I carried for these two boys.

Months turned into years. Some static, some surprising. Every birthday became a quiet victory. I marked milestones privately—five, eight, ten—numbers I wasn’t sure we’d reach. Around their sixth birthday, I made the decision to leave my career and focus on Nine Lives Twine. It wasn’t a difficult choice. One evening, stuck in traffic long past when I should have been home, I kept glancing at the clock knowing I’d miss medication time yet again. I knew this moment would repeat itself. I chose love over money, presence over pressure.

Being present with them meant being present with myself. New routines formed. I never let my guard fully down, but I allowed myself to breathe. Loving them more intentionally—with tenderness, gratitude, and awareness—softened something in me. Time shifted from being a thief to being a gift. Life stopped feeling like something to outrun and became something to inhabit. Love moved to the front of every decision I made.
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When they were around ten, they were no longer asymptomatic. Congestive heart failure entered the picture, and with it came obsessive counting of respiration rates, frequent medication adjustments, and a fear of leaving them alone—even briefly. I cried in the shower. I carried sadness quietly. But I also woke each day determined to make it the best day possible for them. All their favorite things. Every day. I ended each night with them pressed against my chest, tears welling without fail—grateful for one more day.

Fergus went into crisis first. A long week of decline, escalating care, an emergency visit, and finally the realization that medical intervention had reached its limit. I scheduled at-home euthanasia for the following morning, wanting to spare him the stress of another trip. He had been semi-stable all week. At 1 a.m., everything unraveled. He entered crisis suddenly, and there was no saving him from the kind of death I had spent years trying to prevent.

Poppy declined soon after losing Fergus. Slowly at first, then unmistakably. For six months, we lived with extraordinary intention. I became his constant—his shadow, his comfort. He followed me from room to room, sat beside me while I worked, waited outside the shower, slept curled against my chest. Evenings on the patio became ritual. Warm air, a small blanket, the garden he once explored with Fergus. Stillness. Presence. Love.

The signs were familiar. I knew I was losing him. At the same time, my mother’s health was failing. The layers overlapped—anticipatory grief stacked upon grief, time stretched impossibly thin. One look from his veterinarian, a quiet “you need to keep him warm,” told me what words didn’t. We kept a scheduled cardiology appointment two days later—not to confirm what I already knew, but to give us time to say goodbye. That same night, my mother passed, after promising to keep Poppy close to her chest on their journey.

I haven’t fully untangled these losses from one another. Maybe I never will. There is no rush. This space—this ache, this remembering—is grief. And grief, I’ve learned, carries its own strange comfort. It is proof of love.

Staying in the Stitch You're in

When anticipatory grief pulls you forward into imagined endings and timelines, it can help to gently narrow your focus to what’s right in front of you. Not the whole story. Not the ending. Just the stitch you’re making today. With pets, that might be noticing how they greet you, how familiar routines bring comfort, or how sitting together quietly can be enough. Staying in the stitch you’re in doesn’t mean ignoring what’s hard—it means choosing to live the moments that are still unfolding, fully and honestly, one at a time.

A Closing Note

If you’re living inside anticipatory grief, please know this: you’re not behind, broken, or failing at this. There is no correct way to carry love and fear at the same time. Some days will feel heavy, others unexpectedly tender, and many will be both. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong—it means you’re loving deeply. For now, it’s enough to stay present, to notice what’s still here, and to let that be meaningful. This space you’re in matters. Grief is proof of love, and love—however fragile it feels—still belongs to you.

With love, 
​Theresa

Theresa and Poppy. Present.