His Smell After the Rain

That is the title of a book by Cédric Sapin-Defour that was an enormous success when it was published.

It tells a love story. The story of a man and his dog. A story made up of walks, glances, silences, tiny rituals, and the very special place an animal comes to occupy in our lives. A quiet presence, yet an immense one. Until the day that presence is gone.

And then there is the emptiness. The sound of paws you think you can still hear, the food bowl you cannot bring yourself to put away, the routines that no longer have a purpose. And that smell, after the rain, that you miss so terribly.

Beyond the story itself, this book has one tremendous virtue: it breaks the taboo surrounding grief for an animal.

A friend recently confided in me, almost ashamed: “I cried more when our dog died than when my father passed away.”

As though he had to apologize for it. As though the depth of our grief had to be proportional to the importance society attaches to the one we have lost.

A patient also shared how much she was suffering since her cat died. Eighteen years of life together. Eighteen years of companionship, tenderness, and affection. Yet she hardly dared speak about it. “It was only a cat. People understand better when it’s a dog,” she told me.

Is there a hierarchy governing who has the right to grieve? As though sorrow needed to be justified by the species, lifespan, or status of the one who has left us.

Since when does grief need to be legitimate in order to be real?

Grieving an animal can be a lonely experience. People around us often minimize it, without meaning any harm. “You can always get another one.” “He had a good life.” “It was only an animal, after all.”

Words intended to comfort, but which can add the pain of not feeling understood to the pain of loss.

Because when we lose an animal, we lose far more than a presence in the house. We lose a relationship. A unique bond, built day after day, often without words, without complicated expectations, without needing to explain or justify ourselves.

Our pet accompanies us through moments in life that perhaps no one else has shared with us. It was there through a separation, an illness, a period of loneliness, a move, the birth of a child. It shared our everyday lives, our joys, and our sorrows.

And there is something distinctive about our bond with an animal: it welcomes us exactly as we are. It does not ask us to succeed, put on a brave face, or find the right words. Its presence can be a refuge, a source of emotional security, an anchor in our sometimes turbulent lives. An animal offers unconditional love; someone waiting when we return to an empty home; a companion in sorrow; a silent confidant to whom we can tell everything without fear of judgment. For older people, it can also support good health, provide a partner for physical activity, and give them a reason to get up in the morning. So many roles entrusted to another living being. My grandmother used to say of her dog, “The only thing he lacks is the ability to speak.”

So when our pet dies, we lose all of this as well.

Sometimes the loss even reawakens older sorrows or affects us more deeply than certain human losses. Not because we loved the people who died any less, but because every relationship is different. Every attachment has its own history, depth, wounds, and way of living within us.

Grief is not a competition to see who loved most. We cannot measure the importance of a bond by the number of tears shed, any more than we can compare two absences. Why do we so readily accept that an animal is part of the family, yet find it so difficult to accept that its death can break our hearts?

Perhaps this is what we should remind anyone who has just lost an pet: you have the right to hurt, the right cry for a long time, the right to keep its bed, look at its photographs, continue talking about it, and not want to adopt another. Or, conversely, to welcome another animal soon afterward without that meaning you have forgotten. The right to say, “I have just lost someone dear to me.”

There is no right way to navigate this grief, and no timetable for when the sadness should end.

There is simply a bond that existed, a love that was lived, and an absence we must now learn to live with.

Because it was not “just an animal” - It was the one you loved.