A family therapy expert whose name I can’t recall, or I would give him proper credit said something when I was a student in his class that I’ve never forgotten all these years later– “You can never be rid of anyone, (and I would add, anything) that you have ever loved.” At the time I wrote this sentence in my notebook, I happened to be grieving a separation from my husband of 12 years. I found this truth both depressing and hopeful at the same time. I still do.
Ambiguous Grief is one of the most difficult loss experiences to traverse. The loss of a relationship due to divorce leaves both parties, and their children and friends flailing about for clues on how to behave and how to treat one another. Unlike when someone dies, there are no communal rituals or traditions to follow. I remember suggesting to my soon-to-be ex-husband that since we couldn’t make a good marriage, perhaps for the sake of our children, and ourselves we could strive to make a good divorce. Somehow, we did, but when I spoke those words, despite being a family therapist myself, I had only a sketchy idea of how we would accomplish that.
Addiction, dementia, mental illness, these medical issues in a loved one can make them no longer available for the relationship we used to have with them. The person is still alive, but they are not the same, so the relationship cannot be the same. So, neither can we be the same person we were. I did still get to be the” big sister “to my younger sister Pat who lost herself and her own memories over a period of 10 years through mild cognitive difficulties to eventual Alzheimer’s disease. When she lived in a facility and I couldn’t see her for a period, I would always worry that she wouldn’t remember me. It was a blessing that she always did though she sometimes couldn’t figure out what my face was doing on that iPad screen that a staff member was holding for us to communicate. “That looks like my sister, “she would say, and I would, with relief and joy in my voice say, “It is your sister,” and I’d begin talking about something we had done together, reminding her of conversations we’d had. She would smile and seem to be remembering it, though maybe she was experiencing it again for the first time.
In my book The Art of Grieving, How Art and Artmaking Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives, the hardest chapter to write was the one on family estrangement. This type of loss does not only separate children from parents, and grandparents from grandchildren, but being treated as an unwelcomed guest in a relationship where closeness and affection once existed turns out to be one of the cruelest types of ambiguous grief –raising the question, to whom do we belong?
The hopeful part of what my teacher offered his students that day is the notion that whether a loved one dies or is for other reasons no longer available to us to receive the love we have for them, love itself never dies. I’ve found art most helpful in staying in touch with my love of loved ones gone from my sight for whatever reason. There is a statue of two young girls, one a bit taller than the other, in the courtyard garden outside my office. Pat gave this to me years ago to honor our relationship. It accompanied me through her long illness and now that she has transitioned to larger life, it still comforts me. I still tell stories of my ex-husband George and remember how he jokingly refer to my second husband Richard as his “husband in law.”
