Some thoughts today about loss

I've had a lot of time on my hands ( a rarity ) since my time at work has been cut way down. The first week I wandered about not knowing what to do with myself. I took up one book after another trying to get some ideas about what new service for my company Stilmee would be helpful and/or what new direction I wanted to go in.
I think it is a grieving process, not unlike any grieving of something lost. I felt sadness at not seeing the staff and the patients, felt confused and 'neither afoot or horseback' as the old saying goes, strung up between two opposites and out of control.
I've been here before. Once, just as I'd built a fanancially stable family therapy practice, I was first waylaid with injuries from a motor cycle accident (I visited my clients on a red Honda in those days), then found out the company I worked for closed for good. I was left without a job, unable to work due to injuries, a feeling of sadness and guilt at not serving the many families I had been counseling, and nothing to do in the near future but to heal. Healing from an injury is work in itself and took up a great deal of my energy. But there was no special meaning such as what I got in my work.
Anyway, without going into the details, that eventually gave me opportunity to start over and learn how much I enjoyed teaching families. That led to my eventually opening up my business to teach families grieving the loss of the person who was due to a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and helping them enjoy the person who is. I wrote a book about those families challenges.
Last night at the support group I facilitate this theme of grieving was explored. There was the grief of the diagnosis, then the fear about what the future holds, then later grieving the loss of the person and the caregiving role. Most in the group had given up a lot; work, career, normal life, to become a caregiver. We wondered what we'd be once the role of caregiver was done. There were no answers last night. No one knew.