“The more you search for closure, the more trouble you will have living peacefully with your loss.” —Dr. Pauline Boss

I recently discovered the term “Ambiguous Loss,” coined by the pioneer grief psychologist Dr. Pauline Boss. (Here is a wonderful interview with her on one of my favorite podcasts, and here is simpler article on the subject, if you’d like to read more.) According to Wikipedia:  “Ambiguous loss is a loss that occurs without closure or understanding. This kind of loss leaves a person searching for answers, and thus complicates and delays the process of grieving, and often results in unresolved grief.”

I found the terminology very helpful, and it brought me back to those long, unstable years with Vernon— caring for him, loving him, but also missing him. He was present, but his brain was mostly gone. He was physically in the room, but psychologically absent. This brings great pain to any family going through this because they can’t truly grieve as they are living in constant maintenance and change…and even hope. It’s true for anyone who has a loved one experiencing Dementia or drug addiction, anything that has changed them into a different person than the one they once were. We anticipate their death perhaps, and we miss the old relationship, and yet they are still with us.

Dr. Boss says we live in a culture that desires to be in control of situations and therefore we feel the need to seek ‘closure.’ But she also says there is no such thing as real closure from a relationship of someone that we love. She says that term is great for real estate but not people. Grief, in many ways is more of a beginning than a closing…even when our loved one dies, we realize that we are a different person than we used to be because we have allowed that love to change us. And of course, when they haven’t died…we are stuck in the middle even more, negotiating all of this through every day changes. It’s the waiting that hurts as much as the ending. And yet…we will do anything to keep them from leaving and having to start that new life without them.

I came across this video of Vernon as an Easter memory on Facebook this week (I hope it translates here):

https://www.facebook.com/Wunderali/videos/10153590878496491/UzpfSTUzNTYyNjQ5MDoxMDE1MzU5MDg4ODgxMTQ5MQ/

Oh Vernon! One thing he taught me is that life is not a simple package…its full of the BOTH/AND…its funny and tragic, it’s hopeful and disappointing, there’s room for it all, often in the same moment. There was worse and better before this, and worse and better after. It was all there in this moment too. Life is complex. Life is hard. And yet…if that is the price of love, so be it (said in fore-and-after-sight…not always in the middle of it.)

I no longer live in this kind of grief. I think I am perhaps further along in my ‘beginning’ than I might be now if Vernon had died suddenly a year ago than if he’d died gradually. I have difficult times, but I now understand that it’s finally good to be beyond ambiguous grief. And my heart goes out to those who still live there. I hope this word helps others. I know its very common…and very complex.

So I leave you with the words of the genius poet T.S. Eliot:

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”