Anger

Anger — "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; '"Who is to blame?".  Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Anger can manifest itself in different ways. People can be angry with themselves, or with others, and especially those who are close to them. It is important to remain detached and nonjudgmental when dealing with a person experiencing anger from grief.  (Wikipedia)

For the best part, the anger stage of grief came to me as the third stage, after denial and bargaining had abated. This is probably driven more by the type of person you are at your core.  Anger is rarely my first reaction to many situations and so it does not surprise me that this stage of grief took some time to rear it's ugly head, and it was indeed ugly.

Let's start at the top of the ladder, with the higher power I had attempted to bargain with.  Anger  usually exhibited itself in this instance with a bunch of rhetorical questions. I question the very existence of such a higher power if they could allow such a thing to happen to two such loving and undeserving people.  If you do exist, are you good? Are you merciful? Did I wrong you? This list goes on, some just thoughts, other shouted out loud in the fashion of the old cliche of shouting up towards the heavens.  All of these questions were accompanied by intense rage. This was not a conversation with myself but a blazing argument.  Being more spiritual than religious allowed this anger to pass in a comparably short amount of time.

Bringing it back to the physical world, the next target of my rage were the people that had failed to save these two people that mean so much to me.  People I had previously held in the highest esteem, those dedicated doctors and nurses that had previously looked after Claire so well, were now to blame.  

Why didn't they do more? Why wasn't the cerebral hemorrhage detected early enough to save her? Did the ambulance crew try hard enough to revive my Son? Desperate for someone to blame, these amazing professionals were an easy target.  As with my fury towards a higher power, this misplaced anger was short lived.

The next direction, and not so short lived, was the outrage towards myself, for a multitude of reasons, ranging from blaming myself for being unable to save them both, through to irritation at my own thoughts towards the medical staff.  This self loathing soon took me down a path of guilt, replaying every argument or bad word ever uttered to either of them, regretting ever having been human with feelings. 

Eventually logic took my hand with the fact that people argue, parents tell children off, and sometimes we say and do things we don't mean.  Indeed many of the matters I found cause to beat myself up over were not matters of any consequence to them in life, it was me making something of them in death. 

Family were next to join the hit list.  I think we spend some time convincing ourselves that certain people, when the chips are down, will be there to help and support us.  Unfortunately this is not always the case and the stark reality in some cases the complete opposite.

Resentment soon set in when it became apparent that no such support would be forthcoming, and that i would be left on my own to care for a small child.  Whilst I have always been very independent and able to cope with life's little obstacles,  the principle cause of my vexation was not so much that they were not there for me, but more the fact they were not there for my youngest child who could have probably benefited from some time away from the man constantly holding back tears.  

In hindsight, I accept that I wasn't the best company, in fact I would describe myself for a time as a wandering dark cloud of doom.  These days my anger has reduced to simple disappointment, while at the same time acknowledging that not everyone knows what to say to a person suffering from intense grief, and this can cause many to step away, for no other reason other than comfort.  My family, just like myself, are only human.

After running out of what I believed to be legitimate targets, anger being quite some force to be reckoned with, it would manifest itself without good reason and with little warning. Logic served no help here, there is no reasoning with this type of deep routed anger.  

A good example of this was smashing a cup, why? Because I had just dropped one and broken it. My response, in a moment of rage, smash another cup! These episodes decreased in frequency as time moved on, more so when I started to actively embrace this rage, in an effort to direct it in a more healthy manner, and subsequently prevent me from running low on cups.  

So how did I deal with this frustration?  I took several pillow cases and placed one inside the other.  I then placed several plastic shopping bags inside the pillow cases and filled those with old glass jars and bottles.  On a bad day, where I could feel that it would not take much to push me over the edge, I would take my little sack to the woods, away from people that might point and shout, "Look! A crazy person!", and smash it several times against a tree.  

I can't say what it is about the sound of breaking glass, but it is most satisfying.  After several swings (while wearing eye protection), the feelings of rage would be replaced by a feeling of satisfied release, allowing me to go about my day without haunting thoughts regarding what will happen should I lose the plot, a fear that in itself would be kindle to my anger tinderbox.  

My previous experiences of anger always seemed quite justified, and dare I say rational, whereas the same feeling during periods of grief seemed to have had an irrational element attached whereby I was able to blame anyone, and everyone, for anything.  The depression stage of grief followed some weeks later, at first some angry days would be sad days, until the anger had been almost totally replaced by gloom, despair and unhappiness. 


See all my Poems about Anger.