Loss

Pauline Boss, a Family Therapist, coined the term "ambiguous loss."  Ambiguous loss is, in part, a conceptualization of grief that dismantles the popular idea of five tidy stages that once endured, end with closure. Closure is a seductive idea, but the reality of loss and grief, at least in my experience, has never been linear or finite. This summer I was startled to find fresh grief over something I thought I was through mourning. The poem that follows came out of that experience. 

I am diving into that
bottomless blue pool

exploring the margins
that grow wider
with each approach

Where is this pain? 
Where does it live
on a cellular level? 
And can it be excavated? 

I know the answer
to this last question, 
and still I dive deeper. 

But there it remains
in an unreachable
fiber of my being

My world has grown larger. 
This pain will make it
grow larger still. 

Just when I think she’s gone
Grief reemerges,
and crawls into
bed next to me. 

I know this pattern,
and it is not
without tenderness
that I greet her. 
 

Several of my dearest friends are dealing with their own losses and manifestations of grief this week. As we talk, the line from Rilke’s poem, "I live my life in widening circles..." floats in the back of my head. The widening circles may provide a new perspective on, and relationship to, grief, but the process of saying goodbye to loved ones or to cherished ideas or hopes or expectations is revisited again and again throughout a lifetime.

I have been delighted to discover in my own life that keeping grief as a companion does not preclude joy. That closure is not in fact necessary for a happy life. And that living my life in widening circles ensures that there is in fact room for the full spectrum of human experiences to comfortably co-exist.