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The Old English nursery rhyme captures well the feeling that so often accompanies transition or major life change. We experience many changes at this time of year: graduations, weddings, changes in relationships, relocation, changes in jobs, retirement, children preparing to leave the nest, the transfer of a colleague or pastor. All are examples of losses or changes that are common in our lives.

Much of the literature suggests that, as we experience change in our lives, we all go through a similar process of loss and transition: whether that loss is major whether it is minor, or whether it is developmental. We mark many of our changes and transitions with ritual: graduations, weddings, going away parties, funerals. . . and our loss is verified by the community around us.

But there is a type of change and loss that we all experience that defies definition and that deprives us of the closure that is often present with tangible losses: the type of loss that psychologists call Ambiguous Loss.

Ambiguous loss occurs when we are confused about the status of the lost object and about our role in relation to that object. We may experience the physical presence of a loved one without their emotional presence—such as living with a spouse who is overly absorbed in work and is rarely home, living with a teenager who is emotionally absent from the home focusing most his/her attention on others, caring for a relative with dementia who is physically present but emotionally inaccessible, living with loved ones with addictions or other chronic mental illnesses. Our families are not necessarily intact just because we live together in the same house.

In other cases, there may be the emotional presence of a loved one without their physical presence such as when a loved one is deployed or away at college, with missing soldiers, kidnapped children and losses within divorced and adoptive families.

In both cases, we are confused as to the status of our loved one—whether they are “there” or “not there” remains indefinitely unclear. Perceiving loved ones as present when they are physically gone, or perceiving them as gone when they are physically present, can make us feel helpless and confused and thus more prone to depression, anxiety and relationship conflicts. This is so because. . .

· The loss is confusing. We can be baffled and immobilized. It’s difficult to make sense of it and our role in it. It’s even more difficult to problem solve because we do not yet know whether the loss is final or temporary.

· The uncertainty prevents us from adjusting to the ambiguity of our loss by reorganizing the roles and rules of our relationship with our loved one, so that we freeze in place.

· We are denied the symbolic rituals that ordinarily support a clear loss—such as a funeral after a death in the family. Few, if any, supportive rituals exist for people experiencing ambiguous loss. The experience remains unverified by the community around us, so that there is little validation of what we are experiencing and feeling.

The confusing quality of ambiguous loss reminds us that life is not always rational and just; consequently when we witness it, we tend to withdraw rather than give neighborly support, as would take place in the case of a death.

When we experience ambiguous loss, we may be filled with conflicting thoughts and feelings. We may dread the death of a family member who has been hopelessly ill—or mysteriously missing for a long time—but we may also hope for closure and an end to the waiting, acknowledging that our loved one, as we knew him or her, is gone anyway. Neither the physical presence nor the physical absence tells the whole story.

When there is an inevitable change in relationship--either through death, relocation or growing up and moving out of the parents home--we may protect ourselves from the prospect of losing that person by becoming ambivalent—holding a spouse at arm’s length, picking a fight with a parent, or shutting a sibling out even while he or she is still physically present. Anticipating a loss, we both cling to our loved ones and push them away. We resist their leaving and at the same time want to be finished with the goodbye. It is not uncommon for military families or for college-bound teenagers to unconsciously pick a fight with loved ones at home. This makes the unbearable leaving become bearable: as if to say “good riddance, I need to be out of here anyway.” The conflicted goodbye may then be followed by guilt at the last days together being tumultuous ones.

The greater the ambiguity surrounding this type of loss, the more difficult it is to master it and the greater can be our anxiety, family conflict and depression. The challenge for us within our families is to maintain connections, psychologically as well as physically. This used to happen at least at the evening dinner table for many families, but that ritual is now often replaced with grazing or eating alone, even when everyone is home. Unless it is a time for being together psychologically, emotionally and cognitively, the psychological family may disappear. Without time for talking, laughing, arguing, sharing stories, showing affection, praying, we are just a collection of people who share the same refrigerator.

The more strongly we perceive our absent loved ones as still present, the more distress we tend to experience. In order to minimize the loss associated with a loved one leaving home, we must change our perception of who that person is. The family portrait must be revised. Relationships with growing children are excellent examples of the continual challenge we face to change our perceptions of who is in and who is out of the family.

Ambiguous loss can make us feel incompetent. It erodes our sense of mastery and can challenge our belief in a world that is orderly and manageable. But if we learn to cope with uncertainty, we realize that we can accept differing views of the world. Once we recognize and give a name to the ambiguous losses in our lives, we are taking a first step toward coping. We must give up trying to find the perfect solution. We must redefine our relationship to the missing person. Most important, we must realize that the confusion we are experiencing is attributable to the ambiguity rather than to something we did or neglected to do. We assess the situation, begin revising our perceptions of who is in the family and on what basis, and gradually reconstruct family roles, rules, and rituals. We feel more in charge even though the ambiguity persists.

Success comes, not in the situation changing, but in our ability to find some way to change, even though the ambiguity remains. Several factors may influence how we gain meaning from ambiguous losses.

Try asking yourself these questions: How did my family handle ambiguity? Was I permitted to express sad feelings? Were only women and girls expected to care for the frail and the dying? Were men and boys expected to remain stoic? Were family rituals and celebrations ever altered, and if so, why? Who in my family was known to be able to tolerate not having the answer to a problem? What do you think it was that allowed that person to tolerate ambiguity—personality, gender, age, life experience, religious beliefs?

Rituals and celebrations reveal a lot about a family. Try to remember how your family celebrated special events: holidays, rituals of birth, adulthood, marriage and death as well as celebrations of achievement such as graduations and other recognition ceremonies. Who was invited? Who performed which roles?

With ambiguous loss, the task is to let go, to risk moving forward even when we do not know exactly where we are going. We move to keep from freezing in place or becoming comfortably static. In the confusion lies opportunity for creativity and new ways of being that have some purpose and a chance for growth. If cherished family traditions are no longer possible, learn to revise them instead of giving them up altogether.

Gilda Radner, called it “delicious ambiguity.” The 39-year-old comedienne who was battling advanced ovarian cancer, hoped to end her book documenting her illness with news of recovery, but instead ends with an homage to ambiguity: ‘Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end…like my life, this book is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. “Delicious Ambiguity”…I may never be able to control the fear and the panic, but I have learned to control how I live each day.” She died in 1986.

. . .and the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, challenges us to be gentle with ourselves in our search. . .

. .Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. . .and the point is, to live everything. . . Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some day into the answer.”

Kircher, Kathleen. Mastering Major Change & Transition. CSC Tapes. Religious Education Congress 2000. Taped Sessions.

Rilke, R.M., trans. S. Mitchell. Letters to a Young Poet . New York: Random House, 1984).

Boss, Pauline. Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live With Unresolved Grief. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press: 1999.