232 Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan
some support. By this time, our oldest son was at university and our youngest
had started at a nearby community college. I was working very hard within a
health system that had cut itself back to bare bones and was expecting all of
us to work extra. There was lots of work stress, and then I would go home to
deal with the household and two young men who were wonderful, but really
needed the guidance of their father. Yet, he was 8500 miles away in Zambia
and South Africa trying to make opportunities that could help our family.
When he would come home, we tried to stay upbeat with one another. It was
always wonderful to see him when he would first arrive at home. We would
try to pack in family time, couple time, time with our neighbors and church,
knowing that it was only a short time until Tumbi would need to return to
Africa.
We scrimped and saved wherever we could and we were getting by, until
the end of 2013 when the health system I worked for decided to downsize its
offices in the Philadelphia area and I knew I would be without a job shortly.
This was a terrifying time. The idea that we could have both our sons in col-
lege and neither of us with an income felt like the uncertainty of the world was
upon us. Although we are people of faith and our church and neighborhood
communities were concerned for us, no one was likely to be able to support us
if one of us could not find stable, well compensated work soon. I was explor-
ing the new Affordable Care Act so that I would be able to make sure our
health care was covered. I was counting every penny of my severance while
I sent out resume after resume and went on interviews.
It is hard to convey the questions one has about oneself when approach-
ing 50 and finding oneself out of work. The programs that are offered to pro-
vide support for job-hunting make the assumption that we are young people
with no idea about how to dress or present ourselves during an interview. Yet
I had always had professional jobs, was capable of functioning quite well in
international business settings, and certainly understood “the way the world
works.” Yet now, I felt like potential employers were looking at me and won-
dering how old I was. Did I have the future in front of me (and the low salary
of a new worker) that they were looking for? Now we were both demoralized
and it was a real challenge to keep each other moving forward.
I had written about the losses involved with immigration several years
ago for the first edition of this Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan (Walter &
McCoyd, 2009) text. Prior to that time, I had not really thought about loss and
mourning as connected to things other than deaths. This time, I recognized
the many experiences of loss I was having as a result of Tumbi losing his job
and I losing mine. It was obvious that losing our incomes was frightening.
What was less clear was how it affected our senses of ourselves. I know it
affected Tumbi’s sense of himself as a man who supported his family and met
his responsibilities. I saw him struggle with that and I felt terrible for him,
even as I found it frustrating. When I was told that my job would end, I felt like
a part of me had been given a terminal diagnosis. I did not know whether we
would manage to survive or not. I prayed and had faith, but I also knew that
many people had lost their homes, their marriages, and their well-being after
losing jobs. In a recent article, the ties to loss were identified. Papa and Maitoza
(2013) identify the ways identity losses are tied to grief and prolonged grief
symptoms in their sample of mostly professionals. Self-esteem was a critical