When Things Changed: A car accident and nonfinite loss
Do you remember the movie The Matrix and the scene where Morpheus offers Neo the choice between a red or blue bill? When Neo is exposed to the truth of the world he thought he knew, he can either take the red pill, which would take him down the path of willingness to learn and understand more about the realities of the world around him. In this, he is also choosing to be an active part of changing it. If he takes the blue pill, he will be able to return to his world and never know the deep truths but live in a state of ignorance and bliss.
Working in grief and loss is kind of like taking the red pill. You see the world differently and recognize the undertow of loss that is pervasive and present, yet no one talks about it. It is ignored, or even worse, unrecognized. You see and feel how the discomfort around loss and death, something all humans experience, is left unseen or supported. For those who have lost someone significant, they weren’t given the choice between a red or blue pill. They were force-fed a red pill, and like the scene in the Matrix, they can’t go back.
There is a big analogy here, and if you haven’t watched The Matrix, I may have lost you. My apologies, if so.
What I am getting at is that once we experience loss, who we are changes, and we can’t go back to what life used to look like. This can be felt in living losses too. This is referred to as a nonfinite loss. This is when life does not match up with your expectations (Bruce and Schultz, 2001). This can come from many different forms of loss, like an accident, diagnosis, or separation. It refers to the child's or adult’s experience of what they thought life was going to look like. It can be hard to identify a loss because there is no clear endpoint to focus on. While death carries its own unique process, understanding the grief of living loss is not always recognized.
I didn’t realize it until I was asked to visualize the last time I remember being a kid. The picture of me sitting on my bed with my favorite stuffed bear came to mind. The day that happened for me was January 6, 1990. I was five years old, my brother was seven, and my sister was about to have her first birthday. We would spend our Christmas breaks in the Bay Area in California. My family would house hop between each of our grandparents, family, and friends in a mad dash of excitement. We would eat a lot, exchange gifts, play with our cousins, and head back to our home in Southern California after New Year’s Day. This particular year, we were picking my brother up from his godmothers to finally make the 7-hour trip back home. As we piled into the car, my dad pulled onto the main road to get on the freeway, and we were all settled for the trip. I always picked the back seat of the van because it meant I could stretch out and sleep once the trip was under way. My sister was in her car seat in the middle row, next to my older brother. Like kids do, we were a few minutes in and ready for our road trip snacks. My mom had turned around to hand my brother peanut M&Ms to share between us.
That was my last memory before our van was side-swiped.
I remember seeing the Peanut M&M’s fly through the van before I instinctively squeezed my five-year-old eyes shut. The loud crash and quick jolt were followed by a silence I can still hear.
As I peeled my eyes open, the peanut M&Ms were scattered on the floor, and as I shifted my gaze up, the front window was shattered. I heard my mom groan, but from the back of the van, I could not see her or my dad in the driver or passenger seat. I would later find out that my dad had hit the windshield and was laying over the steering wheel. My mother, due to how she was positioned and the impact, had been pushed to the floor of the passenger seat.
Everyone, including the other car, survived the crash, but the road to recovery would be long for our family, especially my mom. My parents were whisked away in an ambulance. My head was bleeding, which prompted the paramedics to place me on a gurney and tape my head between, what I remember as two pool noodles that held my small head in place. The paramedic would gently touch my limbs, asking if anything hurt. I would shake my head only to hear him ask me to respond with my voice, because he didn’t want me to hurt my spine in case there were more injuries. I couldn’t speak, even if I wanted to. I lost my voice in that moment, and I was too scared to say even a small word like “no.”
In that moment, everything changed. Instead of heading home to Southern California, we were living between my two grandparents homes, and before I knew it, we were enrolled in a new school with no friends, and our parents were nowhere in sight. I was fortunate to have a family that came together to provide the essentials. Logistically, we were provided for, but emotionally, we were in the dark. With little news or information about our parents, it felt like we had just started a new life.
After about four months, my parents were transferred out of the Intensive Care Unit, and my dad was the first to come out. I remember being so excited to see him and then being struck with fear as I saw his face wrapped in bandages that had spots of dried blood. I missed and needed him, and I was scared of him. I didn’t know if I knew him anymore. Struggling with two emotions that seem to be in constant conflict would be a constant battle in childhood. I would later discover through my own work that this was common for other children who experienced trauma and grief. Later, my mom would be released, but she would be confined to a wheelchair for two years due to the number of broken bones in her back.
When we finally made it home that spring, we walked into a room with a pile of presents that Santa left in our living room, because while we were away visiting, Santa did not forget to come to our house. These were the same gifts that were waiting for us on January 6th. I remember how silly it felt to be opening gifts in the middle of April, but I also remember how much joy that moment brought our entire family after a really dark and lonely time.
The reality was that life had changed for each one of us, but the impact looked different for each of us. The life we thought we had never came back. We had all swallowed the red pill, and the life we knew that felt safe, predictable, and normal was gone.
It marked a profound amount of grief and ambiguity that changed the course for all of us. While our losses (death and living) continued to mount, this moment is burned into my memory as a significant ending to a part of my childhood. At the beginning of that school year, my mom would race us to school and back… and she would never do that again. We would walk home, and we were now greeted at the door by the nurses who cared for my mom, while dad worked to take care of all five of us. My sister, who is visually impaired and neurodivergent, became more of my responsibility, and I never ate peanut M&M’s in the car again. Year after year, it continued to look different, and the effects of that day would continue to unfold in new losses and challenges.
This time of year, whether I mean to or not, the buildup to that moment still impacts me. One of the hardest years was when my children turned six years old, because they had officially had a safer childhood than I had. My husband and I are here and healthy. I can walk them to school and see their faces.* As a parent, it brought me joy; for the little girl I was, it brought a lot of pain. It’s an odd feeling to have when you know that everyone survived the crash. I couldn’t point to the grief for so long, because I didn’t know where it belonged.
While the trauma of that experience created a different type of grief, it also shaped a lot of my values that carry me through how I live, parent, and see the world. As much as it stinks to say, I am grateful for it. As I ventured deeper into working with grief and loss, I realized how many moments in childhood were left unacknowledged and unprocessed, only to struggle with the uncomfortableness as an adult. I wish we had the hard conversations five-year-old me ached for so I could understand what was going on. And while my parents sent me to a therapist to work through some of the experience, I wanted to know how to talk to my parents, who, themselves, lacked the language to explain change, loss, and grief. If I had to be honest, its what shaped me for the work I do now. It created the passion to support caregivers and communities navigate the difficulties and challenges that impact how we lead and care for one another.
For everyone, the blue-pill life is guaranteed to end (I know… harsh), because grief is a natural reaction to loss that all humans will experience. In my experience, while I fully believe my family, including my parents, did their best to help us navigate the losses (death and living), working as a grief professional has shown me how we can use grief-informed strategies not only to support after death but for many of the inevitable changes and losses our children and families face. I know that what is supportive in loss can be the prevention that creates closer families, communities, and bonds with others through hard times. And while sometimes I wish there was a blue pill that returned me to the previous world, I can’t ignore the damage of that undertow as people isolate and children continue to face adversities related to grief. Every time I look at my kids and we talk about the hard things, like the people who have died, the sad events of the world, and the siblings they’ll never know, our communication continues to open and our trust strengthen. No matter how hard the topic and how many mistakes I’ve made, I take a deep breath, find grace, and lean in.
Nonfinite Loss - addresses grief and loss tied to experiences that do not have a clear end point like death. This can be experienced in how they have hope or planned life turned out. This experience can happen among living losses like accidents, injuries, separation, divorce, trauma, and a number of other losses.
Ways to support your kiddo:
Find ways to label the losses experienced. Create strips of paper and explore where things at home have changed. This can help children identify where their feelings may come from and create opportunities to share the differences and similarities as a family.
Check-in - creating routine check-ins not only give another form of consistency, but allow children opportunities to share their feelings. It also gives both parent and child permission to not share and share when they feel ready.
It’s okay to say “I don’t know” - sometimes we don’t know why bad things happen and it can create feelings of not feeling in control. As a parent, we can feel the pressure to provide answers, but sharing that they are not alone in that ambiguity can decrease feelings of isolation, opportunities to explore answers together, and a tolerance for when questions may not have answers.
*My mother is also visually impaired. She is now fully blind but has been visually impaired since her childhood; another nonfinite loss.
