Parallel a diode to solid state relay load is a short circuit?
You need to connect the diode the correct way (reverse biased, as shown), otherwise it will indeed conduct when the SSR turns on and likely destroy the SSR and quite possibly the diode. 

When connected as shown, it is reverse biased until the SSR turns off, upon which the inductive load will cause the diode to become briefly forward biased until the energy in the magnetic field is absorbed by the coil resistance and diode forward drop. Otherwise the voltage across the load would increase to potentially damaging (to the SSR) levels. 

Consider the below schematic- the switches represent the SSR and the stuff in the boxes represents your pump motor. 







simulate this circuit &ndash; Schematic created using CircuitLab

The switches open at t=0 and current is 1A through each circuit at that time. As you can see in the below simulation, the voltage across the switches increases to a bit over 12V and then drops back to 12V when the diode stops conducting about 2.5ms later. 



If I remove D2, the difference is dramatic: 



The voltage across SW1 spikes to about 900V, before dropping back.