“I feel like I’m doing time for a crime I never committed.”   That’s what one of my older patients said to me in our very first session after he was moved unexpectedly from his home into assisted living. He wasn’t exaggerating. He wasn’t being dramatic. He was telling me exactly how he felt. […]

Imagine waking up every day not knowing whether to grieve or to hope. Whether to set a place at the table or quietly put the extra plate away. Whether to say “is” or “was.”   This is the territory of ambiguous loss — and it is, as family therapist and researcher Dr. Pauline Boss describes […]

Recently, a 73-year-old journalist reached out with a question I hear often in my work as a geropsychologist, but rarely see reflected in our culture: what do we do with the grief that comes with aging? She told me she’s known grief in the ways we’re used to naming—losing a sister in young adulthood, an […]

Over the past few weeks listeners have been reaching out to me sharing their stories of loss. I’ve heard from several people that their aging parent or their older sister-in-law, or their older cousin died. Some due to coronavirus and others due to dementia, or even a sudden heart attack.   I’ve created this blog […]

  In this second interview with MJ Grant, MJ shares the most intimate details of an end of life conversation she had with her dad, Manley “Mannie” Grant.   In this interview, MJ also shares about how it was discovered that her dad was deaf and the information that his family received from professionals about […]