A few years ago I read an excellent book entitled Grief: A Philosophical Guide by Michael Cholbi. Since then, events in my life have led me to reflect further on the several varieties of grieving experience, as William James might have phrased it. Foremost in my mind are anticipatory grief (mental, emotional, and spiritual adjustment to a future loss, such as loss of parents) and ambiguous grief (adjustment to a loss that is difficult to understand or resolve, such as a loved one's incapacitation because of dementia).
As Cholbi so ably explores, in all such situations the relationship you have with a loved one continues, but it is drastically changed. Although this is most stark when your loved one dies, the experience can be just as vivid when your loved one loses abilities and memories, undergoes personality changes, and the like. Your loved one is still present in your life, but in diminished ways; your love, too, is still present, but its foundations can start to feel wobbly if in important respects your loved one is no longer the person they once were.
Given that a relationship is so thoroughly bound up with the lifelong conversation you have with one you love, it can be especially disconcerting when that conversation sharply narrows in scope, shifts in its emotional tone, or otherwise loses its depth and vibrancy. What forever felt like solid ground is now uncertain, precarious, unfamiliar. It's heartbreaking when you can no longer share thoughts and feelings as you once did, make plans together, confide in each other, seek each other's counsel, and engage in many other activities of a shared life.
For these reasons, the term "anticipatory grief" doesn't quite hit the mark. This grieving process isn't something you'll encounter in the future: it's right here and right now. What perhaps makes it especially difficult is that while we humans have well-defined rituals for the ultimate loss of a loved one, we lack them for the progressive losses along the way; moreover, the subtle emotions involved are harder to put into words and thus less easily communicated to friends and family. Yet the losses involved, although not ultimate, are no less final.
Circumstances such as these can give rise to deep questions. What are my responsibilities now, knowing that our mutual investment in each other will become ever less reciprocal? What is the beautifully right way for me to act in this changed relationship? How can I best give care to one I love? Indeed, from the widest perspective, what is love, and what is its constitutive role in life's fulfillment?
These are urgent philosophical questions of a profoundly personal and private nature, are they not?
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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