((5-27-26) Mental Health Advocate Jerri Clark writes brilliantly in her new book – Gone Before Gone – about how she copes with the loss of her son, Calvin, whose serious mental illness led to arrests, homelessness and eventually suicide in 2019 at age 23.
What makes Gone Before Gone unique is her exploration of “ambiguous loss”—the grief experienced when a loved one with dementia or severe mental illness is “‘gone” but is still alive. She describes it as “death by degrees.”
She concludes that “Life’s only clarity is sheer uncertainty.”
In a positive review, Kirkus noted: “Clark offers refreshingly simple responses to platitudes about mental illness, such as a measured rebuttal to “everything happens for a reason.” Clark writes: “My son’s struggle with mental illness had no reason to it. I’m trying to find meaning in what’s left of my life, but that doesn’t mean his pain was something the world needed.”
Here are my thoughts.
Jerri Niebaum Clark loved her son, Calvin, from the moment he was born. She changed his diapers, sang him to sleep at night, and felt the pure joy that came when he first said “Mama.” When Calvin later described his childhood, he pictured “a smiling sun in a cutely drawn neighborhood—everything a kid would ever want.” There were good schools, plenty of friends, and endless smiles. Jerri taught Calvin how to surf—one of her passions—and watched with pride as he caught his first wave. Family vacations and birthdays were joyful celebrations.
There were hiccups, of course—the ordinary troubles that shape both child and parent. But Calvin loved his parents and appeared on track to live a successful and full life. That was before he became sick.
Because Jerri’s love for her son was so deep and unwavering, she never doubted, after Calvin was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, that he would recover and that life would return to what it had been. Jerri and her husband, Matt, would make certain of that outcome. With their help, Calvin would put this “blip” behind him.
She was confident this was a blip
This is how their journey began, as it does for so many parents who love children with serious mental illness: with confidence, determination, and hope. Jerri sought out the best doctors and therapists to help quiet the storm in Calvin’s brain. She learned everything she could about serious mental illness and the depression, self-medication, and addiction that often accompany a bipolar diagnosis. Together with Matt, she believed they would help Calvin return to being the loving son they had raised.
But mental illness is cruel, persistent, and—when untreated—progressive.
Those of us who have a child with serious mental illness or addiction know what it is like to look into their face and see a stranger. It can feel as though an alien force has taken control. This loss is especially devastating when an adult child refuses to accept the illness—an all-too-common symptom of the disease itself. There are moments of clarity. We hear our children promise that “this time” will be different. This time therapy will work. This time medication will help pull them back from the abyss. And slowly, painfully, we learn a truth no parent wants to face: recovery does not come in a straight line, and it is never guaranteed.
With each hospitalization and each arrest—and there were many of both—recovery seemed more distant. It was as if Jerri were trying to catch smoke in her hands. The good times grew fewer; the bad times more frequent. Calvin would beg for help and then push his parents away with cruel words. He told Jerri he loved her. He told her he hated her. As his illness progressed, Calvin cut his parents out of his life and became homeless. How does a mother sleep at night knowing her son is wandering the streets?
What is Ambiguous Loss?
What Jerri was living through, though she did not yet have the language for it, is what family therapist Pauline Boss calls ambiguous loss. Calvin was physically present but increasingly psychologically absent—a form of loss common in families affected by serious mental illness, addiction, dementia, and traumatic brain injury. There was no clear line between presence and absence, no socially recognized ending, and therefore no roadmap for grieving. Jerri was expected to hope and mourn at the same time—to hold on and let go simultaneously.
While many Americans with bipolar disorder receive treatment and are able to move forward with their lives, not everyone does. Calvin died at age twenty-three, despite the herculean efforts of his parents. He left behind unanswered questions, lingering doubts, and—most painfully for Jerri—no closure. Her grief churned like the turbulent waves she once loved to ride while surfing. The rituals that usually help people mourn proved ineffective. As Pauline Boss explains, ambiguous loss resists closure. It defies the ceremonies, language, and social acknowledgment that help make loss bearable.
Jerri came to realize that ambiguous loss had entered her life long before the March day Calvin died. Though he had been physically present during those final months, he had been psychologically absent. Like dementia or traumatic brain injury, mental illness had taken her son from her in pieces.
How loss has impacted my life
I had never heard the term ambiguous loss before I met Jerri. But when I read this book—with its skilled, compassionate writing and its clear-eyed exploration of unresolved grief—I thought about the death of my sister, Alice. She was killed in an automobile accident at seventeen while riding a motorbike I owned, on her way to visit a high school friend. A car struck her as both entered a blind rural intersection bordered by tall crops. I was two years younger and knew nothing about grief.
At her funeral, the minister quoted the Apostle Paul: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” That verse—and the well-meaning platitudes offered by friends (“This is part of God’s plan.” “She’s in a better place.” “Everything happens for a reason.”)—rang hollow. At home, I watched my parents suffer. Even near the end of their lives—both lived to be ninety-four—you could not mention my sister’s name without reopening their pain.
Pauline Boss describes a second form of ambiguous loss—one in which a loved one is physically absent but psychologically present. Although my sister died suddenly, her absence never resolved into anything resembling closure. Decades later, she remains vividly alive in my mind, in my parents’ unhealed grief, and in my own longing. Her death, too, remained ambiguous.
Nineteen years after Alice’s death, I woke one night calling out her name. The feelings I had buried as a child—silenced because her death was too painful for my parents to discuss—came spilling out. Seeking closure, I returned to the rural intersection where she was killed, hoping to make sense of my loss. Instead, I found only frustration, anger, and bewilderment. The sadness my parents carried daily had been passed on to me, settling in as an unwanted guest, forever present.
That is why I am so grateful to Jerri Clark for writing Gone Before Gone. After Calvin’s death, she did not fall silent. She became an advocate for others living with serious mental illness. That is how we first met—as parents demanding that our nation build a more humane and effective mental health care system. Her tireless efforts locally, statewide, and nationally through the Treatment Advocacy Center—an organization dedicated to removing barriers to treatment—created an immediate bond between us.
Ambiguous loss does not require resolution
Jerri’s search for meaning led her to Pauline Boss and the teaching that ambiguous loss does not require resolution. With the same passion she brings to advocacy, Jerri found solace in understanding loss and became determined to share that understanding with others. Reading this book helped me realize that the grief I carry—for my sister’s death, my son’s serious mental illness, my father’s dementia—does not need to be fixed. Instead, it needs to be acknowledged, named, and lived with.
As Boss teaches, the goal is not closure but resilience: learning to live fully while holding unanswered questions, fractured narratives, and enduring love.
Gone Before Gone is a gift because it offers permission to stop asking the impossible of ourselves. By sharing Calvin’s life, his death, and her own journey through grief, Jerri Clark shows us that while we may never move on from loss, we can live well alongside it. Perhaps that, ultimately, is both Calvin’s legacy—and hers.
About the author:
