"What does it mean to grieve someone who is alive, but who walks, talks, thinks, acts and looks different from before?"

"The experts call this kind of loss 'ambiguous grief' or 'unconventional grief.' People with loved ones who fall prey to Alzheimer’s may experience this, as may parents whose children become alcoholics or drug addicts. Naming my grief is helpful because it invites me to engage in rituals of grieving. When I lost my old husband, there was no funeral, no burial, no going through his items to decide what to keep or discard. No questions about when I might consider dating again. I never removed my wedding ring and gazed at my bare finger. I simply carried on, missing my husband and occasionally crying among strangers. My new husband isn’t the same person I married, but he has his beauty. I admire so much about him.... Every morning he sits on the porch with a cup of coffee, chatting with neighbors. Lacking a crisp memory of the past and unable to plan for the future as he once did, he lives in the moment. He meditates regularly on the couch with closed eyes. He rarely complains about anything...."

From a NYT "Modern Love" column called "Are You My Husband?" It's by Megan Horst, whose husband Christian, 18 months after she married him, had a bicycle accident that caused "obvious damage to his left temporal lobe" and probably also "shearing, or micro-tears." She is an urban planner in Portland, Oregon, and he was too, until the accident left him unable to "do professional work" or to "keep pace with carpenters or handymen, jobs he had excelled at previously."