Anger
Very soon after you have partially recovered from the shock of death, you may experience an anger that spills over into an almost uncontrollable rage. The anger may be directed against yourself for example, if you were not with your son when he died and feel you could have prevented what happened by some action or other, or that you should have had enough money to hire the services of a famous specialist who might have been able to save or prolong your partner’s life. Perversely, you may direct your anger against the loved one who has died: Why did he leave me to face the world all alone? \Xlhy did she deprive me of the chance to see her grow up/to fulfil all the plans we’d made together, etc? How could he be so selfish?
The explanation for this ill will is hurt, and the cause of your hurt is, in an indirect fashion, the person who has died. Anger may be the result of a sad misunderstanding in the last few hours or minutes of your loved one’s life. A last kiss or squeeze of the hand may not have been acknowledged by the dying person. And since the bereaved are so sensitive to any clues about how they are valued by their loved one, so close to death, this can feel like a massive rejection. In reality, it may be that they had no energy to respond, or they needed to save their strength to deal with their oncoming death. But such rational understanding is virtually impossible at times like this.
Don’t be surprised if you find yourself dwelling on the more negative aspects of their character, or re-running specific incidents in your head from your life together when, for example, you thought they didn’t behave as they should have, or when they dismissed as trivial something you strongly believed in. Perhaps you nursed them for years at home and feel angry for having had this time ‘taken away’ from you. This seeming disavowal of your love is a common emotional self-defence strategy among the recently bereaved.
There are more obvious targets for anger. If death was tragically caused by a third party in a car crash or murder, for example, then your anger will be directed there. Violent fantasies of revenge against those who caused the death of your loved one can be extreme and all-enveloping.
It may be hospital staff, including the doctors and nurses, who are the prime objects of your anger, especially if you believe that, for whatever reason, they were able to prevent, or were negligent in causing, the death of your loved one. If you believe in a god, then you may direct your anger there. If your loved one died young, you might even look at elderly people in the street and ask yourself: ‘Why didn’t they die instead? They’ve already had their time.’
Much anger of this type is based on prejudice and misperceptions of reality. In the vast majority of cases, the causes of your anger are likely to be spurious and, ultimately, self-defeating. No amount of rage will make any difference to the reality that death has separated you from the person you loved. The only result of prolonged and irrational rage is bitterness, hatred, resentment (on your part and on the part of those who have had to listen to your rage) and probable ill health. The first step is to recognize that you are angry. It is only then that you will be able to release your anger in a constructive fashion.
Nevertheless, there may be times when you feel you just can’t help yourself. It is quite likely that you will feel furious hostility welling up within you when you see people you know in the weeks following the funeral – at the supermarket, in the street, at work and at parties.
These are awkward moments, but it is important to keep in mind that it is possibly as difficult (if not more so) for them as it is for you. You will have had a little time to begin to adjust to your present state while they will have been becoming increasingly anxious about seeing you again. They will have been dreading it for fear of saying the wrong thing and upsetting you. And when they do eventually meet you they may feel that they are unable to cope. Some people cannot cope. 1 particularly remember, for instance, bumping into an acquaintance in the street fairly soon after Shirin’s death. 1 saw the panic in her eyes before she looked away and strode off as fast as she could without saying anything.
These uncomfortable and embarrassing encounters continue as you begin to return to work and start going to social gatherings. Your colleagues at work might avoid you. You might see people at parties visibly stiffen as you walk into a room, as they steel themselves for what they anticipate will be an awkward interchange.
Almost inevitably, people are nervous and try to say something comforting, but mostly it just turns out to be foolish. For example, people commonly ask: ‘Are you all right?’ (I could hardly believe that so many people thought that this was an appropriate thing to ask because even in the fog of the earliest days of my despair it was obvious to me that this was a breathtakingly stupid question. My wife had just died. Of course 1 wasn’t ‘all right’.) Yet there is worse. ‘Have you got over it yet?’, ‘I suppose that it’s just one of those things’, and ‘Never mind’ are examples.
There will be others you talk to who will try to rationalize the senselessness of death. For instance, 1 was told by a colleague that there was a purpose to Shirin’s life and death. It was to make me ‘grow as a person’. And while I’m able to understand an argument that suffering might lead to a greater understanding of self, 1 certainly didn’t appreciate such trite, unsolicited and altogether dubious homespun philosophy. What such people do not realize is that someone in extreme grief doesn’t want to know what they might have gained as a result of a tragedy; the bereaved are only concerned about what they have lost.
Even after a year or more, people presume to intrude on your grief. 1 remember being frustrated by something or other at work well into the second year after my wife’s death, only to be told in the comforting tones reserved for the very smallest of children: ‘Get over it, Hamish. After all, it was a long time ago.’
Feeling hurt by these sorts of ‘well-intentioned’ comments is not unusual. In fact you should expect it. However, if you find that your reaction to hurtful comments is to become antagonistic, you might want to consider reframing your thoughts. Instead of choosing to become incensed, a more constructive approach would be to empathize with the predicament of your workmates and acquaintances. Try and appreciate the apprehension that they are experiencing; they are only trying to do the best that they can. No-one, except an intensely callous person, would intentionally offend someone who has recently been bereaved. Don’t strike out or think bitter thoughts; accept the attempts, however clumsy, of one individual trying to offer comfort and support to another.
