"Last Thanksgiving, my dad couldn't open the jar of pickles. That sounds like nothing. It sounds like a bad setup for a joke about getting old. But my dad is 67, he ran a small business for 30 years, and I watched those same hands build shelving units, change tires, and grip my shoulder hard enough to steer me away from trouble for most of my life."
"The term is ambiguous loss, and it was developed by Dr. Pauline Boss, a researcher and family therapist at the University of Minnesota, who spent decades studying families dealing with a particular kind of suffering - the kind where someone is physically present but psychologically absent, or physically absent but kept psychologically present. She originally studied families of soldiers missing in action, but the framework turned out to be far more universal than that."
"There are two types. Type One is when someone is physically absent but psychologically present - a missing person, a parent who left and never came back. Type Two is when someone is physically present but psychologically changed or diminished. A parent with dementia. A spouse after a traumatic brain injury. And - this is the part that hit me - a parent who is aging in ways that slowly, almost imperceptibly, alter who they are."
A 67-year-old father's momentary inability to open a jar triggered an intense, unnamed emotional rupture tied to shifting perceptions of his reliability and identity. Psychologists call this ambiguous loss, described as a loss that has no ending: either physical absence with psychological presence, or physical presence with psychological absence or change. Dr. Pauline Boss developed the concept after studying families of soldiers missing in action; the framework applies broadly to aging, dementia, traumatic brain injury, and other situations where a loved one is altered but still present. Ambiguous loss can produce prolonged, complicated grief as roles and relationships gradually transform.
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