The Daily - Back to School 2020
21
Ambiguous loss How to face the enormity of our current grief By Charlotte Houston The Daily Grief is an emotion I barely know. I don’t mean that as a brag; instead, I feel cowed by its looming eventuality and intimidated by its presence in others. Since I’ve never been there, I don’t know how to treat those who are experiencing it. The United States’ poor response to the virus has made us a leader in coronavirus deaths, accounting for 21% of worldwide deaths related to COVID-19 while only making up 4% of the world’s population. That, added to the ongoing trail of murders by police officers, deaths of protesters at home and afar, and wildfire season gearing up, the list of awful things that we’re constantly aware of goes on and on. I don’t need to tell you. The likelihood that we or people we know have been or will be touched by loss right now is high. That’s why I wanted to face grief and attempt to understand it, so I can help
others through it or recognize it in myself when it comes. What is grief? I attended the webinar “Ambiguous Loss: Grieving in the Time of COVID-19,” hosted by Charlene Ray, a licensed social worker and grief counselor, in order to understand what she termed the “global grief pandemic.” After classes got cancelled in March, when my roommate and I were deciding whether we should leave Seattle and go back home, we must’ve made almost 10 entirely different, thought-out plans in the course of three days. I inexplicably burst into tears at the kitchen table and lashed out at my roommates over small things. As Ray described common signs of grief — trouble making decisions, irritability, exhaustion or fatigue, confusion,
6869 Woodlawn Ave NE Seattle, WA 98115 Located in Greenlake www.counselingwellbeing.com Insurance Accepted! Call Today!
206-242-8211
numbness, physical aches and pains, and immovable sadness — I began to recognize my emotional state when the reality of the pandemic began to set in. A form of grief Ray discussed as being especially relevant right now is “ambiguous loss,” which occurs when the loss is unclear and inexact, defying closure. For example, a family member who is mentally no longer present but still alive would be an ambiguous loss. In these scenarios, the future is unknown, and we may feel stuck in a limbo. Oftentimes, people will respond to ambiguous loss by attempting to control the small parts of lives that they can. Both the continuing pandemic and the reality of police brutality feel inescapable and unending. It’s hard to look forward to brighter days when we have no idea when there will be an end to this seven-month nightmarish news cycle. There are also the well-known stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Ray asserted, however, that these may not occur in a certain order, and you may make it through one stage and then be
