Today, we’re excited to celebrate Hit Hard, a powerful new book by Harvard chaplains and long-time Cru staff Pat and Tammy McLeod. After their son Zach suffered a traumatic brain injury during a high school football game, the McLeods were thrust into a journey of “ambiguous loss”—grieving the son they once knew while embracing the son who remained.

With deep honesty and hope, Hit Hard offers a moving testimony of how we can pick up the pieces, redefine expectations, and trust God for hope in the midst of unresolved pain.

This book will resonate with anyone facing loss—from brain injuries to addiction, divorce, foster care, or Alzheimer’s. Read a snapshot of Tammy’s story below!

P.S. There is a sale going on THIS WEEK for their book re-release – Get the ebook for only $2.99 or the paperback for the low price of $9.99 from July 7th through July 13th!

The dreaded phone call. “Get to the hospital quickly. Doctors need your consent for emergency brain surgery for Zach.” 

Our sixteen-year-old son was playing in a football scrimmage that night. What? 

When we arrived at the hospital, the surgeon told us that our son’s prognosis was death to full recovery or anything in between. We signed the paperwork, kissed and prayed for our unconscious son, and nurses wheeled him into the operating room. 

Zach survived the surgery, but a portion of his brain did not. 

During four months of acute rehab, he learned to walk again with a brace, to say a few words, and to do activities of daily living with help, but seventeen years later, he still has little short-term memory or speech, and right-side weaknesses of all kinds. 

Zach chokes easily and can fall if someone doesn’t hold onto his gait belt every minute. He lives in a group home and needs one-to-one care twenty-four hours a day. He will never be able to work for a living, marry, or have children. You can meet our beloved Zach here:

Ambiguous Loss 

By the two-year anniversary of Zach’s injury, after trying every available intervention, I realized he would not have a strong recovery. 

I poured through grief books only to realize that loss to death differed from our type of loss. I asked others if they knew any books dealing with our sort of loss, but no one did. 

I finally called the librarian at Zach’s former rehab hospital. The next day he emailed that the term for our loss is ambiguous loss and sent articles by Pauline Boss who coined the term. 

I immediately devoured the articles and then ordered her book.

Boss describes two types of ambiguous loss. One is when the person is physically absent, yet psychologically present in the minds of loved ones. Examples include those missing due to war, natural disasters, kidnapping, divorce, adoption, or immigration. 

The other type of ambiguous loss occurs when a person is bodily present but is not the same emotionally or cognitively. Examples of this loss include people affected by Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, addiction, severe mental illness, or debilitating brain injury.

Every sentence, every paragraph resonated with my pain. Ambiguous loss validated my conflicted feelings over our situation: In so many ways Zach was gone, but he didn’t die. What kind of grief is that? Ambiguous loss. Finally, our pain had a name. 

Boss wrote about how people who are closely attached and become separated through ambiguous loss, suffer a trauma even greater than death.

Someone understood. 

Zach and I had been so closely attached, connected through music and deep discussions and praying for and with each other. No wonder his situation felt like a trauma even greater than death. 

And more. Grieving people often talk about the importance of closure. I had sensed that in our type of loss, there wasn’t and shouldn’t be closure. Couldn’t be closure. Zach was still with us.

Boss confirmed my belief. To pursue closure was a fruitless and impossible endeavor. Instead, I learned that we needed to learn how to hold two opposing ideas in our minds at the same time—having and not having. 

Ambiguous Loss and Relationships

Living with ambiguous loss is incredibly stressful. There are many reasons why this is so, but one is that it can be tough on relationships. Many marriages don’t make it through ambiguous loss. 

Rather than holding two opposing ideas in our minds at the same time, my husband and I tended to fall off on one side or the other of “having and not having.” This set up the conflict in our book Hit Hard: One Family’s Journey of Letting Go of What Was and Learning to Live Well with What Is.

In addition to dealing with our own grief and trying to communicate with each other through the loss, we also had three other children and wanted to help them deal with their pain.

Then there were our friends. Since there are no public ceremonies to acknowledge ambiguous loss and its fallout, or honor the memory of the loved one, friends were unsure how to respond to the endlessness of our unique form of loss. Should they grieve with us, or pretend life was fine now that Zach had lived through it all? 

We hope that through our story you will experience the nearness of God in ambiguous loss and learn how to be resilient in it. If you are not experiencing ambiguous loss at this time, we hope our story will help you to help others navigate the rocky terrain. 

Learn more:

1. We want to highly recommend everyone pick up a copy of their book  Hit Hard: One Family’s Journey of Letting Go of What Was— and Learning to Live Well with What Is. Their book is on sale for Amazon Prime Day. Get the ebook for only $2.99 or the paperback for the low price of $9.99 from July 7th through July 13th!
2. Follow Pat and Tammy’s journey on TikTok @notaloneinambiguousloss, or Instagram and Facebook @patandtammymcleod