Ep. 23: Ambiguous Loss, Solo Episode with Host Amanda Kernahan

This will be our last episode of Season 1 of Grief Trails, but we will be back with more stories for you the first Wednesday in September!

Today is a solo episode with host Amanda Kernahan about ambiguous loss, examples of what that has looked like in her own life and how stigma and shame can keep us feeling isolated in these experiences. 

Please follow us on Instagram @Remembergrams in the off season. If you or a friend have a story that you think would be a good fit for the podcast in Season 2, please reach out to us via email to contact@remembergrams.com

Thank you so much for listening and have a wonderful summer!! 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the grief trails podcast. I'm your host, Amanda. Kernaghan from remember grams. A small business with a big heart where we help you send personalized and meaningful grief support to the people in your life who need it. Check out our custom cards where we can design something, using your photos and characteristics that will help your recipient feel that unique level of support. Or our grief support boxes, where you can choose a book to go along with other items carefully chosen to provide comfort during a difficult loss. Today on the podcast is a little different. I don't have an interview to share with you. And I considered not releasing an episode this week. While there's a special episode here today. I also want to let you know that this will be the end of season, one of grief trails. As we take a summer hiatus to record and edit more interviews. And as I finished the editing of my book and spend some much needed time vacationing with family. We'll return the first Wednesday of September with season two. But first let's talk about today's episode. As much as I struggle sometimes to express myself here or in any spoken medium compared to writing, I mentioned. In a former episode that I felt I would need an additional solo episode to discuss another topic of grief. We don't talk about often. And one that has weighed heavily on my life. I talk about this as the grief of incarceration, but the technical term for this type of grief is actually called ambiguous loss. More ambiguous grief. It occurs without the death of someone, but as a result of some type of physical loss, loss of contact or psychological loss, Common examples of this can include a missing person, a divorce and estrangement and incarceration, drug addiction, traumatic brain injuries, and chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's. Before I really get into this topic. I want to say that without planning it this way, it just happens that this episode is being recorded and dropped on June 7th. My older brother's birthday. He's turning 43 today in a prison cell, hundreds of miles away from here in a state I've never set foot in, separated from family without the ability to go for a walk or get himself a special meal to commemorate the day. In another month in July, I will spend my 40th birthday among friends. My husband and my kids will be at a lake that we go to every summer. And there is sure to be laughter and hopefully lots of sunshine. Probably a cake. And lots of love that will fill that day. He turned 43 years ago in a different cell. And when I think about those differences in our lives, it breaks my heart a little. I could tell you first that the last time I saw my brother was before he turned 40. But I think the story begins long before that. While my memories of him are limited by circumstances. I remember our childhood together. Despite having three brothers, it was really him and I that grew up together. Our youngest brother is coming much later. I remember our rooms sharing a wall. That we will cut our hands to and talk through while the other had their ear against their side of the wall to hear. Way to communicate despite the barrier between us. I remember him sitting outside my childhood bedroom window on the side roof of our house and smoking a cigarette. Well, he talked to me about his girlfriend. I remember him teaching me to ride a bike and trick or treating together. I remember the way our mom loved him unconditionally, despite his many struggles. When I looked up ambiguous loss for this episode. Missing person was one of the first examples given, and I was taken back to the first time my brother was labeled a missing person and a runaway. I write about this, my book. It was several days of uncertainty that shifted something in me and my entire childhood. I still remember the fear and anxiety of not knowing what was going to happen. And the utter lack of control. The waiting that felt like it could go on forever. And knowing that that was a real possibility. That time. I was only 11 years old. We lived in a pretty rural area of New York near the Vermont border and our house in front of our house had a very busy road. But behind her house was a very rural road that not many cars took and behind that were some woods with trails that my brother would often ride his dirt bike on or ride his bike on. And I remember coming home from school one day and my mom. I had to asked me and my best friend at the time who lived next door. If we would. Go up into the woods and see what my brother was up to there. Because she felt like something was off. And my friend and I thought it would be a fun adventure. And so we did, we went up into the woods by ourselves and thought it was a little spy mission. And that close enough to the area where I knew he would be. He would go to a place up there called the gravel pits and. I didn't go there very often, but I knew where it was. And so I went up there, got close enough and we could hear voices. And there was a girl up there and she was a teenage girl, same age as him. He was probably 14 at this point. And. She looked kind of dirty. I think I remember she had no shoes on. And I thought that was really weird. And I think he was giving her food out of his. Lunchbox from school. Out of his backpack. Which I thought was really odd. Anyway, I only looked for a moment or two, but then I got scared and he ran all the way home. And I told my mom about the fact that he's hiding this girl up in the woods. And it was a, felt like a big scandal. And I also felt really bad that I was tattling on my brother. And spying on him. And I went and hid in the bathroom for a few minutes and then he came home and he was really angry because he realized that I had been following him. And my mom confronted him and he got mad and he went up into his bedroom and he slammed the door. And probably 10 minutes later, I was standing in the kitchen with my mom and saw him jump off the back roof. Onto the ground and then start running up the driveway with his backpack. And that was how he ran away. And he didn't come home that night. I kind of thought like by that night it would all be resolved. And then the police got involved. This girl's dad got involved. She would, did not go to our school. She and my brother had met, I believe at some type of rehab. Program that they had both been in previously. And. It was a really scary time. And it was the first time I had experienced that sensation of not knowing where someone was in the world. And that is a experience that I don't think I can describe. Well enough if you've never been there yourself. And unfortunately it's an experience that I continue to have throughout my life in different ways at different times. For the majority of the time it was with my older brother, but I think maybe once that. That feeling happened with my younger brother also, where we weren't quite sure where he was. And then of course there was about one day when we were, we lost contact with my youngest brother again. And we got the outcome that no one wants. And that was that he had passed away. But just that sensation of someone being missing and not being able to get in contact with them as. It was a really scary feeling. There were sometimes weeks, sometimes months where I didn't know where he was. And in those moments, the world becomes a very big and very unpredictable place. Starting as a kid and continuing into adulthood. There was always a heightened state of anxiety and fear during these periods and definitely a lot of grief. Some of it would be anticipatory grief predicting that he would die in one way or another. And some of it was just grief for loss dreams, a life with a sibling that I could spend holidays with or have over for dinner once in a while. These types of feelings and grief is common for families of people who struggle with addiction. Something, my family knew deeply. And as quiet as I kept my feelings with it all. I knew it was shared with my parents. My mom used to call me every day, once I moved away. And sometimes I could tell immediately that she'd been crying. It's hard for me to put myself in her shoes and think about the grief that must come with watching your child. The baby raised, struggle so much. To worry about them dying so often. The last time my older brother went missing was in 2019. After our youngest brother had passed away. And when that had happened, my older brother had been incarcerated. And so this was his first time that he was going to be released from prison. And get another chance at life. And so I think in the aftermath of losing my youngest brother, I felt a lot of pressure at that time to make sure that this was a successful transition for him, that he had every shot that he could. And I think. I wanted that second chance to be able to help my brother because I couldn't help my younger brother anymore. And there is a lot of guilt that goes into that. And in some regret that I hold with me and so. At the time I spent a lot of days going to Goodwill in between my job and I would try to buy clothes for him to wear once he got released and buy supplies for him that I knew he would need once he was released. And the way the release would happen was not going to be, he would walk out of prison and then be a free person, but that he would be released into a reentry center. Where he was still technically considered incarcerated. And he would stay in that reentry center for a certain amount of time and then be released from there. So sort of like a step down unit. Before being discharged, if you will, if you're in the medical world. And the reentry center that he was going to be sent to was in my town where I live, the city that I live in. He had been incarcerated in a different state. And I drove to that state with my dad and. And it was a whole ordeal, getting him from there. And we were able to drive him to the reentry center in my city. And. I knew right when I drove him that something was wrong, his mental health was not well, and it was very evident in that drive. In the conversations that we had, that he was having some paranoia. And I really worried, and I, but I wasn't sure if that was a normal after effect, maybe of being incarcerated for quite some time. And so I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it became clear over the next month while he was in the reentry center that. He was mentally unwell. And. There was a day, I think. It was within a week of when he would be released completely and be a free person. Again, that he was given a curfew by the reentry center that he had to be back by 8:00 PM. And he just didn't return. And. He was missing again. And so that was my most recent experience he was missing for several weeks. And. And I knew at the time that the outcomes that we were facing were not good. That it would either be getting arrested again. Or being found dead because at this point when he did not return to the reentry center, he was considered an escaped inmate. And so he was wanted by the us marshals and. The fbi and. and all of that so it was a difficult experience I went through. All of the same emotions that I had battled through countless times. Worry anxiety, fear, sadness, anger, despair. And I did it quietly while going to work and raising my kids and functioning in my day-to-day life. And it took a few weeks, but he was eventually arrested again. I say again because it wasn't his first time being incarcerated. And it wasn't my first time knowing my brother was behind bars. I'd shared with a few friends that he was missing in those weeks. And when he was arrested, I told them the outcome. And they invariably gave me all the same response. Oh, well, at least, you know, he's okay. And then they moved on. Ambiguous loss is just like that ambiguous, difficult to see, difficult to validate. Knowing someone who is incarcerated is okay. Is a complex feeling for the most part. I do know that he's alive. The quality of that life is debatable and questionable. Either way. It's sad. It's sad for my niece and nephew who lose time. And opportunity to spend with and get to know their dad. It's sad that he's not well enough to be able to function on our society right now. And as a family member, it's a difficult position to be. I can't say that. I know my brother very well as an adult. Most of my memories from him are from well over a decade ago. I still feel a sense of connection to him because I know our mom loved him so deeply. And with her gone, I still hold on to a sliver of hope that there may still be some future for him. Outside of his current circumstances, the hope and reality are difficult to reconcile sometimes. And for what it's worth most types of ambiguous loss, come with a Hardy dose of stigma and shame. When people ask me, how many siblings do you have? What do they do? It's always awkward for me. And I say, Well, I have three brothers. My youngest brother died of an overdose and my oldest brother is in prison. But I swear we're like a really typical American family and I had a great childhood. It's hard to say those things, and it's hard to know how they're received. Out of curiosity. I wanted to look up how many people have experienced a family member being incarcerated. And what I found was shocking. According to Cornell, a group of researchers in 2019. I found that 45%. Almost half of all Americans have had an immediate family member jailed or imprisoned for one night or more. I thought this must be a fluke because almost 50% sounds incredibly high. And so I kept looking and I found similar statistics reported and other places. Prison policy.org reported in 2022. That over 40% or 113 million Americans report having an immediate family member incarcerated at some point. Now I understand that having a family member incarcerated for one night is a different experience than having a family member incarcerated for multiple years. Or even for a lifetime. But I think these numbers are massive and I encourage you to take a few moments just to think about it. When it comes to addiction, the numbers are similar. Pew research in 2017 reported that 46% of Americans have had a family member or close friend with an addiction. And I happen to know because 2017 is the year that my youngest brother died that over 70,000 people. In America died that year from an accidental overdose. And those are huge astronomical numbers to me. And the reason all of these numbers feel so shocking to me. Is the isolation that you can feel as a family member. Clearly, I'm not the only sister who's lost a brother to an overdose. Or the only sister who has a brother who was incarcerated. Yeah, I very rarely meet other people. Who've lost a sibling in the same way, and I almost never meet others who say they have a sibling who's incarcerated. Logically. I know they must be out there. Many of them. And this isolation and shame can be one of the reasons ambiguous loss. Can feel so difficult. If you or someone you love has had any of these experiences, including things that cause ambiguous loss like divorce. Estrangement certain chronic illnesses. That grief you feel is real and valid. Grief is not only felt when someone dies, but when things change in unpredictable ways, And all of the emotions that come with that are normal, whether people talk about it or not. And I know this episode has been really brief. But I just wanted to make sure, I think each and every listener who has been here. For season one of the grief trails podcast. Thank you for holding space for all of the stories we've shared here. And if you or someone, you know, has a story that you think would be a good fit for this podcast, please reach out to us@contactatremembergrams.com. We would love to have you on as a guest in season two. And I would like to leave you with one last journal prompt. Find a quiet space. Set a timer for 12 minutes. And write about a time in your life where you fell ambiguity. It can be with a career, a relationship. With grief or in any way that it has presented in your life. Feel free to share your writing with us at contact. Remember grams.com. And as you continue onto your summer, I hope you find some healing. If you are grieving. If someone, you know, experiences a loss, we are still here ready to help you support them@remembergrams.com. And I hope you find some time to enjoy the sunshine and sometime with the people that you love. Thank you so much for listening to grief trails. Please continue to subscribe and follow us on Instagram. Ever. Remember, Graham's have a wonderful day and summer head. We'll see you again in September with more stories here on the grief trails podcast.