Just What’s in That Fog
Nothing unexpected happened.
Not really.
It was a move. A long planned, much needed move specifically done in response to her own aging.
A new place with a built in community, supports for all manner of life requirements and a blissful lack of routine maintenance one generally anticipates to keep a house up and running. And yet.
It’s the “and yet” which kept my client stuck. It included in it the sense that something felt off, not quite right and, without a doubt, difficult to explain.
While difficult to explain, it is, believe it or not, a well researched and documented experience; ambiguous loss.
A loss that doesn’t look like much
The expression and much of the research comes from Pauline Boss, PhD, who describes it as trauma of loss without resolution. Her website is here: https://www.ambiguousloss.com/
I only recently heard the term myself, delivered to me by my mother, who loves to send me Instagram videos. In this particular one the content creator was talking about not knowing the people around the table at a large gathering. My mother’s added note suggested I might find it useful for work. Indeed I do.
It is the perfect description of the loss we feel when something is both still present but in another way, psychologically absent. You’re still you with all your skills but without the fancy label to announce your profession. Your parent who is still here but whose dementia has taken away their identity. Your role in the family even when you’re no longer the big sister who takes care of the younger siblings; let’s not mention that you’re all adults taking care of yourselves.
The problem is, unlike a death, there is no notice in the newspaper or funeral where we’re given time to mourn a loss. Rather, it is a quiet, unresolved absence without clear definition.
Retirement often works the same way
You’ve spent the last school year counting down the days until your last day in the classroom. Or you’ve completed your last on call day at the hospital. Whatever it is, the last has come.
Except you’re still the same person you were before the last day in the classroom, or walking the halls with a white coat on to announce your role. Suddenly, the structure which gave so much identity, is gone. And yet, you’re still you.
What makes this is easy to dismiss
The shift can be so subtle it’s hard to see; OK, so you’re not getting up to go to work or making the next plan for how to go visit your sisters because now that you live a 6 hour drive away, the entire calculation changes. No more popping over for a cup of coffee with your sister or looking forward to a snow day as a teacher.
No, nothing is wrong in the traditional sense. And yes, I know the expectation is that you’d be grateful for the amazing thing that just happened; retirement, a positive relocation, the birth of a new family member (which puts into stark contrast the new lines in a family, and perhaps, your own aging process.)
The benefit of a formal death notice and funeral is everyone knows you’re grieving, trying to find your new footing. We don’t get that when we retire/move/shift generations, etc.
Ambiguous loss doesn’t resolve the way ordinary grief does, because there’s no clear boundary to grieve. The skills are still there. The expertise is still real. The relationships may continue in a different form. What’s missing is subtle — a structure, a sense of being needed in a specific way — and subtle losses are the ones people are least likely to name, and most likely to carry quietly.
Naming it is what makes planning possible
This is not a reason to put off your retirement or avoid the family gatherings. Tempting on both fronts, but no.
Like many other experiences in our lives, by naming the thing we make it possible to be more intentional about what comes next. The planning questions change and that’s a beautiful thing. We can go from, “how will I maintain this house as I age” to “how can I build community with my newly found energy and emotional resources?” That’s a very different, much more answerable question, and it’s the starting point for preparing well for this chapter rather than wandering into it.
If any of this sounds familiar — in your own life, or someone close to you — it’s worth taking seriously as part of getting ready for what’s next, not just something to wait out. Waiting things out to ‘see how this shakes out’ rarely works, or at least, from what I’ve seen. I hope this gives you some motivation to start planning now for what’s ahead because when it lands, it will likely look like nothing happened in the first place.
