Mourning is Complicated When He is Still Alive

Ambiguous Grief

Aug 10, 2024

I am delighted to introduce my first guest post on The Rebuild Compass. from

Barri Leiner Grant

of The Memory Circle.

Barri and I met through our writing a few months ago and I thought you might enjoy listening to her instead of me for a change! She writes very relatably about grief and runs a grief support group which is where all the proceeds from her paid subscriptions go.

Her website is full of resources for ones who are grieving any sort of loss.

I learned a new term from Barri that is the subtitle of this essay. ‘Ambiguous Grief’. I think I must have read it over at least ten times when she first sent it to me. It hit so hard. I finally have an actual term for how I’m feeling! It’s a real thing, acknowledged by others, not just me.

I hope that knowing you are not alone helps you as much as it has helped and is helping me. Enjoy Barri’s essay. xx

Ambiguous loss is a person’s profound sense of loss and sadness that is not associated with the death of a loved one. It can be a loss of emotional connection when a person’s physical presence remains, or when that emotional connection remains but a physical connection is lost. Often, there isn’t a sense of closure.

Mayo Clinic Health System

“I am not happy.”

It is 8:20 pm. My husband of seventeen years shares these words with me. He has just returned from a weekly business trip.

I am sitting in the quiet night of our dark living room. The girls are tucked in with stories. Emma is 9 and Quinn, 18 months. The door-sized windows run the length of this old ballroom-made-living-room, back when our Lake Shore Drive mid-rise was divvied into condos. The tree top view of Belmont Harbor below, sparkles with docked boats bobbing in peaceful ripples. If you squint, it looks a bit like the ocean of my Jersey girl youth.

These are words that burned an equator into 2005.

And my memory.

I want him to be happy, I think. In an instant, I also imagine what life would be like without this view. Him. Could I move back home?

That I am in fact sitting in the dark – is also not lost on me.

I don’t have to imagine a life without him.

I feel like Ma on Little House most weeks here on the prairie. Pa goes off into the field to fight the execs and score a sale, and Ma holds down the home front. Just the right apple sauce squeeze packs for lunch box snacks, a green shirt for field day, air in the trike wheels we race down the lobby halls on rain days, a Shania Twain playlist in the car that keeps us singing awake as we cruise toward nap time.

Outside the house, we are the envy of friends, family and colleagues.

“You two are goals”, says my young cousin, who is husband hunting.

My husband’s boss makes it a point to tell me at the annual holiday party, “We could not do our jobs without you”. This “thank-you-for-your-service-pep-talk” is no substitute for the five-star family vacay we have so clearly earned. For every mile he has clocked away from home, we deserve 10 in the frequent flyer program of my mind’s eye.

“I am not happy” is not what you want for the boy you have known since 1987. London. Study abroad. Sure, I want him to be happy. I especially want that for the kids we were before kids.

“Do you think we should talk to someone?”

“I can ask Carol who she recommends for couples.”

I imagine he will say no. Change his mind. Go to bed and wake in a better mood. I also imagine I am divorced, like my own parents and that if Mom did this, well then, I can too.

“Yeah, I think that’s a good call,” he says and disappears toward the bedroom.

Two appointments in, we are not nudging anywhere toward happy.

“Are you here to walk through a new door, or for a stranger to give you permission to leave?” I point toward the male therapist. Slim jeans. Suede Gucci loafers. Cobalt oxford. Dark hair. He is serving neutral, but I think he knows where we’re heading.

“If you have one foot out the door, you can leave,” I hear myself say.

I am not sure where this voice comes from. I watch the words float out slowly across the air. I get a rush of warm from my toes to my forehead. Tears loom close to overflow. I am nauseous but somehow standing. Not letting myself cry.

I have an 18-month-old and a 9 year old. I have a dead mother and live far from my family and closest friends on the East coast. I have moved here for him, given up a pr career, manned or rather womaned this solo ship like a rockstar. I have given in to a coming and going sex schedule that syncs to his travel and we are making the most of weekends with the kids. Or maybe for the kids?

“I pretty much have one foot out the door,” he speaks toward the therapist.

I channel a force that knows in my marrow, that I deserve better. And more.

“Then you can leave.”

Permission. This is what he wanted.

We will arrange for a time to tell them at some point I guess. For now they will just think it is another trip. I am markedly calm. Part of me is clear. I recall thinking, he must be seeing someone. Nobody jumps out the window on a 17 year marriage with four small words and no escape hatch.

I head out to my friend Nate’s apartment. I hear the words leave my lips for the first time.

“Yes, separating. No, he says there isn’t someone else.”

He does not believe this is true.

He orders in Thai and serves it at the island of his vintage stainless-steel kitchen. I can’t eat. The tears find their way out. I am in a heap.

“I am afraid I will never have this again. I will never have sex again, or be naked again. Who will want me”? Two kids, divorced. Saggy breast feeding boobs.”

He wraps me in the kind of cashmere throw that people with no kids toss casually over the arm of a chair. He advises me five minutes after I announce my probable divorce demise that I should probably “not take to the bon-bons”. Subtle. But wise.

I arrived back to my girls in the morning and we tell them that Dad is moving to his own house. You will have TWO houses. I use this same phrase with their teachers and the school counselor. “Broken home” was served up when my folks divorced in grade four and I will carefully rewrite this script. Two houses. Two parents that love you more than the whole, wide world.

I later find the cashmere throw, where Nate has tucked it into my overnight bag. A security blanket for the ages.

It rests on a chair in my home, to this day. Fifteen, maybe sixteen years later.

I will spare you the endless court dates. Our shot at mediation. The creative visitation schedule and the horrific financial fear that nearly took me out on several occasions. But you can call me. I will share all of the mistakes and missteps I made if you find yourself here.

Divorced and 42. I had never been on a date in my whole life. Just when you think you have figured out the rest of your years, the plot changes.

I am remarried now. We met on-line. He arrived in a pretty self-actualized package. Never married and fresh from a broken engagement. Seven years younger. He moved in before we made it official and he had enough love (and patience) for the three of us. I never intended to marry again. The truth is, I think I never wanted to get divorced again. We made our own version of a pre-nup. Everyone goes out with half of what they came with and half of what we grow together. This pact is a good one to make in the bliss of the beginning.

He laid bare his moving in needs. A place of his own to recharge at day’s end. To be able to close a door and reboot his introverted bones. We work at happy. Happily. Communicate a lot. And above all else, make room to nurture our marriage. He is an epic stepfather. Ask my girls.

Yes, there was another woman. No, I won’t share any of those details. Yes, my girls now know. I never said a bad word about their Dad. Ever. My friend Nate calls this my “Grace Kelly” moment. I made a pact not to, and stuck to it. I picked him and they only ever get one Dad. When my girls asked and were old enough to know my truth, I shared. I will say that I never knew it could be quite this good on the other side. I often think I should write their Dad a thank you note on my newly monogrammed stationary.

Some days I think, maybe he braved what I could not.