Families of the missing endure a distinct and harrowing form of grief known as ambiguous loss.
Rachel Ganz doesn’t know if her husband is alive — or not. Over three months have passed since Jon Ganz vanished near Missouri’s Eleven Point River during catastrophic flooding and evacuation orders. Since then, he has simply remained missing.
At 45, Rachel finds herself trapped in a painful limbo of sorrow and frustration, waking up each morning to what she calls 'a reality I don’t want to exist in.' In an email sent on July 11, she described her days as suspended in a liminal space, her mind consumed by an endless stream of unanswered questions. “Is 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?” And one that remains stubbornly unanswered: “Are they ever going to find him?”
“Obviously I want my husband returned alive,” she wrote to The Associated Press, “though I am envious of those who have death certificates.”
It's called ‘ambiguous loss’
Like the families still reeling from the July 4 floods in Texas, Rachel Ganz is enduring what grief experts call ambiguous loss — the torment of not knowing the fate of a missing loved one. It is a sorrow as old as humanity, transcending borders, cultures, and generations. Sometimes it strikes intimately, as in Ganz’s case; other times, it grips entire nations — in the wake of tragedies like the 9/11 attacks, the Indian Ocean and Japan tsunamis, the Turkey-Syria earthquake, the Israel-Hamas war, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to Pauline Boss, the researcher who first introduced the term in the 1970s, what sets ambiguous loss apart is the lack of closure rituals — no wake, no funeral, no burial rites — leaving families without the usual means to accept their grief. Experts agree that the only path forward is to learn to live with uncertainty, a concept that is often difficult to embrace, especially in Western cultures.
“We’re in a state of mind, a state of the nation, right now where you either win or you lose, it’s either black or its white,” said Boss, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota who has researched ambiguous loss globally over a half century. “You have to let go of the binary to get past it, and some never do. They are frozen. They are stuck.”
Sarah Wayland, a social work professor at Central Queensland University in Sydney, explains that ambiguous loss differs from traditional mourning because it involves 'repetitive trauma exposure' fueled by the relentless 24-hour news cycle and social media. Yet, once public attention shifts elsewhere, those left behind are often engulfed by a devastating silence.
“They might be living in this space of dreading but also hoping at the same time," Wayland said. "And they are experiencing this loss both publicly and privately.”
The uncertainty feels like a knife that keeps reopening fresh wounds.
In the early hours of July 4, torrential rains unleashed a devastating wall of water across Texas Hill Country, claiming at least 132 lives and leaving nearly 200 people missing as of last week—though that number has since begun to decline. In just two hours, the Guadalupe River at Comfort, Texas, surged from waist-deep to towering three stories high, sending a torrent of water downstream with a force comparable to the weight of the Empire State Building every single minute it stayed at its peak.
Those without bodies to bury have been frozen in a specific state of numbness and horror — and uncertainty. “It’s beyond human imagination to believe that a loved one is dead,” Boss says.
This anguish can arise in any global crisis. Lidiia Rudenko, 39, speaks for countless families in Ukraine whose loved ones have gone missing in action. Her husband, Sergey, 41, vanished on June 24, 2024, during a fierce battle between his marine brigade and Russian forces near Krynky. He is among tens of thousands of Ukrainians missing since the Russian invasion began in 2022, and Lidiia is one of the many left behind, carrying the unbearable weight of uncertainty.
“Some 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,” Rudenko said. “There are days when you can’t get out of bed,” she said. “Sometimes we call it “getting sick. And we allow ourselves to get sick a little, cry it out, live through it, and fight again.”
For almost a decade, Leah Goldin belonged to a rare and painful group in Israel — families of hostages.
Her son, Hadar Goldin, 23, a second lieutenant in the Israeli army, was killed and his body taken on August 1, 2014. Evidence found in the tunnel where his body had been held — including a blood-soaked shirt and prayer fringes — led the Israeli army to conclude he had been killed, she said. His remains have never been returned.
Her family’s journey didn’t dovetail with the regular oscillations of grief. They held what Leah Goldin now calls a “pseudo-funeral' including Goldin's shirt and fringes, at the urging of Israel’s military rabbis. But the lingering uncertainty was like a “knife constantly making new cuts.".
In the chaotic days following Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, the Goldin family dedicated themselves to supporting hundreds of families whose loved ones—among the 251 people taken hostage by Hamas—were being held in Gaza. Yet, for a time, as advocacy for the October 7 hostages gained momentum, the Goldins found themselves unexpectedly sidelined.
“We were a symbol of failure,” Leah Goldin said. “People said, ‘We aren’t like you. Our kids will come back soon.’” She understood their fear, but Goldin, who had spent a decade pushing for Hamas to release her son’s body, was devastated by the implication. In time, the hostage families brought her more into the fold, learning from her experience.
Hamas continues to hold 50 Israeli hostages, with fewer than half believed to be alive. Meanwhile, Israel’s offensive in Gaza has resulted in nearly 59,000 Palestinian deaths, over half of whom are women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. While the ministry does not specify the number of militants killed, it emphasizes that the majority of casualties are civilians. Thousands more are believed to remain buried beneath the rubble throughout the enclave.
Effective Ways to Support Families of the Missing — and What to Avoid
Ganz, whose husband disappeared in Missouri last April, said that initially the sheriff’s department and others conducted extensive searches. She distributed flyers throughout the town where his car was discovered and shared posts on social media. However, someone later accused her of “grieving without proof,” a comment that still deeply angers her.
“One of my biggest frustrations has been people stating, ‘If you need anything, please let me know,’” Ganz said. That puts the burden on her, and follow-through has been hard to come by, she said. “We already have enough ambiguity."
She is considering establishing a nonprofit organization in Jon’s memory, aimed at challenging the stigma surrounding men seeking therapy and demonstrating that doing so is a sign of strength, not weakness. This aligns with Goldin’s belief that taking proactive steps can aid in healing from loss, as well as with Rudenko’s experiences in Ukraine.
Boss recommends separate community meetings for families of the confirmed dead and those of the missing. For the latter, a specific acknowledgement is helpful: “You have to first say to the people, ‘What you are experiencing is an ambiguous loss. It’s one of the most difficult kinds of losses there is because there’s no resolution. It’s not your fault,’” Boss said.
In Ukraine, Rudenko said it helps to recognize that families of the missing and everyone else live in “two different worlds.”
“Sometimes we don’t need words, because people who have not been affected by ambiguous loss will never find the right words,” she said. “Sometimes we just need to be hugged and left in silence.”
