Rachel Ganz\u2019s husband might be alive. But he might not be. More than three months after he was last seen near the Eleven Point River in Missouri amid severe flooding and evacuation orders, Jon Ganz is just … missing.<\/p>\n
That leaves Rachel, 45, in a limbo of sorrow and frustration, awakening \u201cevery morning to a reality I don\u2019t want to exist in.\u201d She dwells there in a liminal state, she wrote by email July 11, with a stream of questions running through her head: \u201cIs he trapped by debris in the river? Is he in a tangled mass of debris on the riverbank? Did he wander off into the forested area instead?\u201d And one that remains stubbornly unanswered: \u201cAre they ever going to find him?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously I want my husband returned alive,\u201d she wrote to The Associated Press, \u201cthough I am envious of those who have death certificates.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s called \u2018ambiguous loss\u2019<\/p>\n
Like the families of the missing after the July 4 Texas floods experienced for much of this month, Ganz is suffering from what grief experts call ambiguous loss: the agony of living in the absence of a loved one whose fate is uncertain. Humans across borders, cultures and time unfortunately know it well. Ambiguous loss can be intimate, like Ganz\u2019 experience, or global, as in the cases of the missing from the Sept. 11 attacks<\/a>, tsunamis in the Indian Ocean<\/a> and Japan<\/a>, the Turkey-Syria earthquake, the Israel-Hamas war<\/a> and the Russian invasion of Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n The distinguishing feature, according to Pauline Boss, the researcher who coined the term in the 1970s, is the absence of ritual \u2014 a wake, a funeral, throwing dirt on a grave \u2014 to help the families left behind accept the loss. The only way forward, experts say, is learning to live with the uncertainty \u2014 a concept not well-tolerated in Western cultures. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in a state of mind, a state of the nation, right now where you either win or you lose, it\u2019s either black or its white,\u201d said Boss, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota who has researched ambiguous loss globally over a half century. \u201cYou have to let go of the binary to get past it, and some never do. They are frozen. They are stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah Wayland, a social work professor from Central Queensland University in Sydney, says ambiguous loss is different from mourning because it\u2019s about \u201crepetitive trauma exposure,\u201d from the 24-hour news cycle and social media. Then there is a devastating quiet that descends on the people left behind when interest has moved on to something else. <\/p>\n \u201cThey might be living in this space of dreading but also hoping at the same time,\u201d Wayland said. \u201cAnd they are experiencing this loss both publicly and privately.\u201d<\/p>\n The uncertainty is like \u2018a knife constantly making new cuts\u2019 <\/p>\n Heavy rains<\/a> drove a wall of water through Texas Hill Country in the middle of the night July 4 , killing at least 132 people and leaving nearly 200 missing as of last week, though that number has dwindled<\/a> as this week begins. Over just two hours, the Guadalupe River at Comfort, Texas, rose from hip-height to three stories tall, sending water weighing as much as the Empire State building<\/a> downstream roughly every minute it remained at its crest. <\/p>\n Those without bodies to bury have been frozen in a specific state of numbness and horror \u2014 and uncertainty. \u201cIt\u2019s beyond human imagination to believe that a loved one is dead,\u201d Boss says.<\/p>\n This feeling can come in any global circumstance. Lidiia Rudenko, 39, represents a group of families in Ukraine whose relatives are missing in action. Her husband, Sergey, 41, has been missing since June 24, 2024, when his marine brigade battled the Russian army near Krynky. He\u2019s one of tens of thousands of Ukrainians missing since the Russian invasion in 2022. And she is one of thousands in Ukraine left behind.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people fall into grief and can no longer do anything, neither act nor think, while others start to act as quickly as possible and take the situation into their own hands, as I did,\u201d Rudenko said. \u201cThere are days when you can\u2019t get out of bed,\u201d she said. \u201cSometimes we call it \u201cgetting sick. And we allow ourselves to get sick a little, cry it out, live through it, and fight again.\u201d<\/p>\n For nearly a decade, Leah Goldin was part of a very small number of people in Israel with the dubious distinction of being the family of of a hostage. <\/p>\n Her son, Hadar Goldin, 23, a second lieutenant in the Israeli army, was killed, then his body taken on August 1, 2014. A blood-soaked shirt, prayer fringes and other evidence found in the tunnel where Goldin\u2019s body had been held led the Israeli army to determine he\u2019d been killed, she said. His body has never been returned.<\/p>\n Her family\u2019s journey didn\u2019t dovetail with the regular oscillations of grief. They held what Leah Goldin now calls a \u201cpseudo-funeral\u2019 including Goldin\u2019s shirt and fringes, at the urging of Israel\u2019s military rabbis. But the lingering uncertainty was like a \u201cknife constantly making new cuts.\u201d. <\/p>\n In the dizzying days after Hamas\u2019 attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Goldin family threw themselves into attempting to help hundreds of families of the 251 people Hamas had dragged into Gaza. But for a time, the Goldins found themselves shunned as advocacy for the Oct. 7 hostages surged. <\/p>\n \u201cWe were a symbol of failure,\u201d Leah Goldin said. \u201cPeople said, \u2018We aren\u2019t like you. Our kids will come back soon.\u2019\u201d She understood their fear, but Goldin, who had spent a decade pushing for Hamas to release her son\u2019s body, was devastated by the implication. In time, the hostage families brought her more into the fold, learning from her experience.<\/p>\n Hamas still holds 50 Israeli hostages, fewer than half of whom are believed to be alive. In Gaza, Israel\u2019s offensive has killed nearly 59,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza\u2019s Health Ministry, which doesn\u2019t say how many militants have been killed but says over half of the dead have been women and children. Thousands of the dead are believed to be buried under rubble throughout the enclave.<\/p>\n How to support families of the missing \u2014 and what\u2019s not helpful<\/p>\n Ganz, whose husband went missing in Missouri in April, said the sheriff\u2019s department and others searched far and wide at first. She posted fliers around the town where his car was found, and on social media. Then someone accused her of \u201cgrieving without proof,\u201d a remark that still makes her fume.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of my biggest frustrations has been people stating, \u2018If you need anything, please let me know,\u2019\u201d Ganz said. That puts the burden on her, and follow-through has been hard to come by, she said. \u201cWe already have enough ambiguity.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s thinking about setting up a nonprofit organization in Jon\u2019s honor, dedicated to breaking the stigma against men getting therapy, to show \u201cthat it\u2019s not weak.\u201d That tracks with Goldin\u2019s thinking that taking action can help resolve loss \u2014 and with Rudenko\u2019s experience in Ukraine. <\/p>\n Boss recommends separate community meetings for families of the confirmed dead and those of the missing. For the latter, a specific acknowledgement is helpful: \u201cYou have to first say to the people, \u2018What you are experiencing is an ambiguous loss. It\u2019s one of the most difficult kinds of losses there is because there\u2019s no resolution. It\u2019s not your fault,\u2019\u201d Boss said.<\/p>\n In Ukraine, Rudenko said it helps to recognize that families of the missing and everyone else live in \u201ctwo different worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes we don\u2019t need words, because people who have not been affected by ambiguous loss will never find the right words,\u201d she said. \u201cSometimes we just need to be hugged and left in silence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rachel Ganz\u2019s husband might be alive. But he might not be. 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