A while ago I read an online exchange that really sunk its claws into my brain.

A teen said something along the lines of "I was more sad when my dog died than when my gran died" and an adult told her that she was fucked up for it.

Since then I've been mentally cataloguing all of the reasons why this is completely reasonable and not fucked up. The comment thread was like 12 years old so it's not like I can provide a timely rebuttal, but it was something to think about.

To me, there are two branches to this. One is "how healthcare works" and the other is "your gran doesn't sit on your lap every day, probably." 

 I was definitely more sad when my dog died than when my gran did. 

I’m not going to say it is normal, because who can say what is normal (not me, anyway), but my gran was always old and old people die, and I vaguely knew she had a boob off for cancer before I was born and then it came back. My dog used to be young and then was middle aged and then got cancer and died. If course it was more of a shock! 

Would the world have been improved more from an extra ten years of my gran than from an extra ten years of my dog? I really couldn’t say either way.