High Death Anxiety and Ambiguous Loss: Lessons Learned From Teaching Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

For gerontological educators, topics such as mortality, loss, and end-of-life issues often emerge or are central in their courses. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised our awareness of loss and death on a global scale and teaching during the pandemic has raised questions about how educators, communities, or systems of higher education can support students’ learning while simultaneously experiencing losses during intense times of uncertainty. In this mixed-method study of 246 students enrolled in undergraduate thanatology courses, we explored their levels of death anxiety and their experiences with pandemic-related losses. We found that students’ death anxiety increased significantly during the pandemic, in comparison to the years prior (p < .001). We also conducted a content analysis in a subset of students’ written narratives (n = 44) regarding their pandemic experiences. We identified three themes. Participants desired: (a) more flexibility from instructors, no questions asked; (b) more compassion and understanding; and (c) specific, targeted support resources. The voices of students were filtered through the authors’ interpretation as educators to provide several teaching recommendations that support student learning during challenging times. The recommendations align with a trauma-informed approach, given the high rates of death anxiety and ambiguous loss among students, and have immediate implications for educators teaching during the pandemic, and for years to come. Finally, we also advocate for more university and community-based thanatology, and gerontology education offerings in general, to help normalize conversations about death, loss, and bereavement.

“Locked Out of Caregiving”: A Case Study of Dementia Caregiving During the Covid-19 Pandemic

It is unclear how ambiguous loss in dementia caregiving is impacted by conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ambiguous loss describes situations in which closure is impossible and ambiguities within a family system ensue. Two situations of ambiguous loss exist. In the first type, one is psychologically absent, yet physically present, e.g. when one has dementia. In the second type, one is physically absent but psychologically present, e.g. moving to a nursing home. Ambiguous loss theory was applied to longitudinal interviews with an adult-child caregiver (age=52) of a mother with dementia, who resided in memory care during the Covid-19 pandemic. Theoretical analysis revealed both types of ambiguous loss were experienced in the dementia caregiving relationship. This was embedded within ambiguous loss type 2 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, e.g. social distancing and quarantine practices led to physical estrangement from others and ambiguity ensued about when, or if, estrangement would end before resulting in death. Further, the coping mechanisms defined in the ambiguous loss framework: restructuring identity, finding meaning, gaining mastery, increasing ambivalence capacity, reframing attachments, and gaining hope, were compromised due to overarching ambiguous loss attributed to the pandemic. Continued panic and frustration regarding lack of communication with and access to the memory care center instilled a sense of being “locked out of caregiving.” Findings suggest dementia caregivers may experience both types of ambiguous loss compounded during the Covid-19 pandemic, suspending grief and coping processes, and inciting poorly understood needs and challenges that must be better understood to support dementia caregivers.

“Some days it’s like she has died.” A qualitative exploration of first mothers’ utilisation of artefacts associated with now-adopted children in coping with grief and loss

In this article, I take a critical approach to the marginalisation of the grief experienced by first mothers who have experienced the non-consensual adoption of a child in England, in a context within which welfare benefits and services intended to support the most disadvantaged families have been dramatically curtailed. With reference to the concepts of disenfranchised grief and ambiguous loss, and in light of some identified parallels between the death of a child and the loss of a child to adoption, I draw upon literature from the field of bereavement studies in presenting findings arising from semi-structured interviews in which 17 first mothers sorted through artefacts such as toys, clothing and blankets associated with their now-adopted children and reflected upon the meanings that such keepsakes had taken on in their lives after loss. Respondents’ accounts revealed that artefacts were invested with high value, and could operate as vehicles for memories of time spent caring for children. It was found that interacting with artefacts could bring comfort, evoking in mothers sensory memories of the smell and feel of their now-adopted child. Interactions with artefacts were found to hold capacity to affirm respondents’ maternal status, as well as symbolising oppression and injustice, sometimes evoking strong feelings of anger directed towards professionals involved in children’s adoption.

Conceptualising Post-Transition Disappearances

This chapter establishes a holistic approach to understanding disappearances in post-transition countries. It considers the historical repertoires of disappearance that emerge during periods of authoritarian rule and armed conflict. It further argues that four logics behind disappearances in those situations continue into the post-transition. These include the clandestine logic, or hiding crimes against humanity from domestic and international scrutiny. Those disappearances also tend to involve marginalised populations; a ‘disposable people’ logic creates framing devices that transform citizens into those without rights or visibility. A political-economy logic emerges with cheap and exploitable workers, who are disappeared when their labour utility is exhausted; those with economic and political power commit these atrocities with impunity. The logic of ambiguous loss becomes a form of social control. Grieving processes are blocked when relatives lack certainty that the person is gone. They further lack the necessary evidence of death and wrongdoing to pursue redress. These four logics together, the project contends, explain why disappearances previously studied only in authoritarian or armed conflict contexts prevail also in the post-transition.

Disappearances in Mexico: An Analysis Based on the Northeast Region

The research for this chapter focuses on the analysis of the characteristics of disappearances in Mexico through four logics: its clandestine nature, disposable peoples, political economy, and ambiguous loss. Each of these logics describes and explains the subtle meanings behind disappearances in an environment characterised by a convergence of multiple forms of violence. Disappearance in this context is used as a specific repertoire of violent action. The empirical analysis uses an original database containing information on 1364 disappearance cases documented by human rights NGOs in Northeastern México (Tamaulipas, Nuevo León and Coahuila) between 2007 and 2017, in the context of the so-called ‘war on drugs’ as well us document analysis.