Chapter 3: "All Our Losses / All Our Griefs" - "The Nature of Loss"

Chapter Three is all about the various types of loss that we undergo in this lifetime.  The authors have broken them down into six major types of loss.  The following is edited from the chapter, each quote only includes enough of the original text to convey the message intended.

Six Major Types of Loss:

1) Material Loss:  Material loss is the loss of a physical object or of familiar surroundings to which one has an important attachment.  Some adults resist recognizing the importance of material loss, as if to take it seriously might mean that one was either too materialistic or too sentimental.  Children will much more easily confess how strong their attachment to a particular object is, and how painful its loss.  Most human beings have some kind of powerful attachment to a material object, whether it be a family farmhouse or a favorite jacket.  If the farm is one day bulldozed to the ground or the jacket given to the Salvation Army, either is a painful loss.  If the object is important because of it's origin - a gift, say, from someone deeply loved - it has extrinsic value.  Other objects may have an intrinsic value; we have an investment in them for some quality of their own.  Objects with extrinsic value attached to another human being whom we love cause the deepest pain when lost.

Material loss is frequently, though not universally, the first loss of which a child is consciously aware.

2. Relationship Loss: The first conscious awareness of relationship loss is also a childhood experience for many.  It may be a loss related to moving, divorce, job change, or change in personal friendships.  Relationship loss is the ending of opportunities to relate oneself to, talk with, share experiences with, make love to, touch, settle issues with, fight with, and otherwise be in the emotional and / or physical presence of a particular other human being.

It is an unavoidable component of human life.  Sooner or later we all experience such a loss.  It may be partial, as in moving five hundred miles away, or total, as with widowhood.

3.Intrapsychic Loss: Material loss and relationship loss are both likely to occur within the child's experience before adolescence.  Intrapsychic loss may occur during that same period, but is more likely to happen for the first time in adolescence.  It presupposes an awareness of the self present in a new way after puberty.

Intrapsychic loss is the experience of losing an emotionally important image of oneself, losing the possibilities of "what might have been", abandonment of plans for a particular future, the dying of a dream.  Although often related to external experiences, it is itself an entirely inward experience.  An external event may be paralleled by a significant sense of inner loss.  What makes such a loss intrapsychic is that what we lose exists entirely within the self.

Very often what we lose has been a secret, a hope or a dream seldom if ever shared with others.  For that reason, the fact that a loss has occurred will also be a secret.

4. Functional Loss:  Powerful grief can be evoked when we lose some of the muscular or neurological functions of the body; we call this functional loss.  It is strongly but not exclusively associated with the aging process.  Most people react with horror to the idea of a child's blindness or crippling; yet the same phenomenon in an elderly person provokes a lesser reaction, reflecting our underlying belief that functional loss naturally goes with the aging process.  But loss is horrifying to young and old.  Going blind at seventy-five is no less painful than going blind at fifteen even if it does happen more often.

Functional loss often carries with it a loss of autonomy.  To lose sight or hearing or coordination is often to lose mobility. That in turn means a loss in autonomy.  Gone is the sense that "I can manage".  In many cases, people will admit the fact of the functional loss but will deny that some of their autonomy is lost.

5. Role Loss:  The loss of a specific social role or of one's accustomed place in a social network is experienced as role loss.  The significance of role loss to the individual is directly related to the extent to which one's sense of identity is linked to the lost role.

Retirement is perhaps the most familiar occasion of role loss, and for some people is accompanied by traumatic grief.

6. Systemic Loss:  Systemic loss is a concept that forced itself upon us as we studied what our informants told us.  To understand it, we must first recall that human beings usually belong to some interactional system in which patterns of behavior develop over time.  Even without a strongly personal relationship to others in the system, one may come to count on certain functions being performed in the system.  When these functions disappear or are not performed, the system as a whole, as well as its individual members may experience systemic loss.

It is not surprising that one of the most common instances of systemic loss takes place when a young adult departs from the family of origin.  When an individual changes or when someone leaves a family, the system must adapt to that loss.  Families and other systems that have a difficult time grieving may seek to keep individuals from leaving or changing so that the system might stay the same.

Comment on Types of Loss:
Almost any specific loss will be a mixture of more than one of the types mentioned above.  One type may predominate, but more than one type may be felt.  To be widowed, for example, obviously means relationship loss.  But widowhood may also mean role loss as the widow discovers that her social life has changed.  She is no longer "a wife" in her community.  If she has been inadequately provided for, she may undergo material loss.  If her sense of identity is dependent on being her husband's wife, the change may also be experienced as intrapsychic loss.

Other Variables in Loss:
1) Avoidable and unavoidable loss
2) Temporary and permanent loss
3) Actual and imagined loss
4) Anticipated and unanticipated loss
5) Leaving and being left


Material Loss:
Certainly all of us can recall an early 'material loss' in our lives.  I remember as a child when my Aunt Vida while staying with us while my Mother and Father were away, burned my favorite toy my teddy bear which I had named 'Red Teddy'.  Even after all these years I can remember how angry I was with her for destroying what was to me the most precious thing in my young life.  To her it was just a dirty ratty teddy bear and there were other teddy bears in our home that were not torn nor filthy, but to me he was the toy and champion that I'd had since I was an infant.  It's amazing how these early losses remain with us for so many decades, this is one memory that reading this book brought back to me.

Relationship Loss:
Here we have what is certainly one of the most scarring of the various forms of loss.  For me as for many of us the first relationship loss I remember is the loss of a grandparent due to death.  For others perhaps this loss represents the loss of a parent due to divorce or abandonment.  At any rate this type of loss will often have lifelong implications.  But we need to remember that this kind of loss can even come out of a broken friendship, where one or the other of the individuals may grieve over the loss of the friendship that has ended due to some circumstance or action.

Intrapsychic Loss:
I think of this type of loss as the 'Loss of a Dream'.  As the authors relay often this form of loss is totally unknown to others.  If we have in our hearts an unvoiced dream or goal, if something happens to prevent that dream from ever being realized, it is a crushing occurrence. As I've stated in previous posts, I think this form of loss can at times be the most damaging.  And a part of that damage I suspect comes from the fact that we often haven't shared this dream with anyone and now we suffer alone. 

This is a good reminder to not only work on our dreams rather than shuffling them off to the corners of our minds but to also share these dreams and aspirations with our loved ones.

Functional Loss:
To loss our ability to walk, see or communicate are terrifying and life altering losses.  For many today this loss of function is mental, as various forms of dementia seem to be ever on the increase in our society.  But the inability to see, walk, drive, or even stand without assistance are losses that nearly all of us will realize if we are fortunate enough to live that long into old age.

We can also be the victim of loss of bodily functions due to an accident or some forms of disease or incidents.  My mother in law has suffered for many years with loss of function (both physical and mental) due to a series of strokes that she has endured.  Sadly, there is little more she can do to try and regain any of the lost function and she must simply learn how to do the tasks she wishes to perform as best she can with her disabilities.  

Role Loss:
When I think of this loss I am reminded of my father and other men like him that I have known.  As he aged and reluctantly started to turn over more and more of the operation of his Ranch to my brothers, he was often very difficult to deal with.  He was floundering to be honest, his entire identity was not only wrapped up in being a Rancher but in being the man in charge.  His position in his family had always been that of the 'go to guy', his siblings and his mother always looked to him for direction and decision making.  And on the Ranch he had always been the one making all the decisions, he then delegated away the responsibility to accomplish those tasks but the decisions as to what to undertake even on a daily basis was always his alone.  Once he had to give up that role to his children he really never became comfortable with it.  Sadly, once he lost his eyesight and became unable to do any of the work or to make any of the decisions, he rapidly wasted away.

Systemic Loss:
This is really the situation that Gail and I have found ourselves in this year.  All of our children are now out of the house and we are having to reinvent our own relationship to one another.  To be honest though both of our children are having this same sense of loss.  Our son is out of school (for the time being) and trying to make it in the real world.  No longer does he have the confines of college and all of his college friends and activities, it's just him now trying to decide where to go next in life.  And Maddie is in college down in Lincoln, she has suddenly been thrown into college life and is away from home for the first time in her life.  No Mom or Dad there to help her out, she is entirely on her own with limited mobility since she has opted to leave her car at home.

In Closing:
In closing on this chapter, as the authors point out and as I've said before you really never have only one loss at a time.  Most if not all of these losses overlap.  My father's loss of 'Role' was a direct result of his loss of 'Function'.  Once he was no longer physically able to do the things needed to be done he was unable to be out and about and keeping in touch with what was needing to be done.  He was simply unable to make all the calls about what needed to be done and in what sequence.

I have glossed over this chapter pretty quickly and I would once again encourage all of you to consider buying this little book.  If you are in the Omaha area and would like to borrow a copy just give me a shout as I do have multiple copies to lend out.

God's Blessings to you all!

In His Love and Absolute Grace,
Roy

All Our Losses / All Our Griefs - order a copy here.