AMBIGUOUS LOSS, ACCEPTANCE, AND COMMITMENT

The transcendent Self knows we can and must move forward even with unresolved pain and loss.

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MY BROTHER DIDN'T ANSWER HIS DOOR at 6:45 a.m., so I called him on his cell phone.

"Sorry, I'm still in bed. I'll be right there," he said.

I had called him the night before to suggest we catch the sunrise at his favorite spot on the river to look for herons, egrets, eagles, ducks, and other water birds. On the way to a park that he's been to hundreds of times, he kept telling me I was going the wrong way.

Five years ago, this man—the most consistent and loving presence of my childhood—was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. His dementia leaves those who love him feeling what social scientist Pauline Boss, Ph.D., calls ambiguous loss. When a loved one dies, the finality of the loss allows most people to eventually find acceptance and closure. With the ambiguous loss of dementia, the person we are losing is still here but not in the way we wish they could be. We can feel ambiguous loss when someone is physically absent but psychologically present (as with estrangement from a loved one) or physically present but psychologically absent (as with dementia).