Published by Dominique Soileau
· January 15 ·
Ambiguous grief has laid its heavy cloud on my household this week. For those who are not familiar with the term, ambiguous grief is the loss of someone who is alive yet unreachable and is a very familiar emotion with those in foster care. It is widely believed that ambiguous grief is the hardest type of grief, harder than a death, as there is never a resolution to the grief cycle, it is a cycle of grief that continues with each holiday, each anniversary, each birthday in a way that is very hard to recover from.
Today I only had one of my children and took the opportunity to do a deep cleaning of my van. I was sweating, vacuuming up goldfish, moving car seats, wiping smudges off the windows.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed an older gentleman standing quietly waiting for me to see him. I looked up and smiled as he approached me with a Mickey mouse doll. He said that it was his grown daughter’s and he had been giving away her toys one by one… and then asked if I would like that one. He did not know that Disney holds a special place in our heart and has a very special meaning to the little one we are mourning this week.
It felt like a sign from the universe, that comfort can come from the most unexpected places. He left before I could properly vocalize what it meant to me, before the tears started. So I sit here giving Mickey a snuggle, sending love to my boy.
