We have established the fact that there is anger in grief and that there should be anger in grief. I hope we have established that anger will find a place to focus. It is not enough to have feelings of anger, we must be angry at something, somebody, or some mistake. Anger aimed at the high wind just isn’t adequate. You can’t cuss a vacant feeling. 

Anger does not have to focus rationally. Sometimes it finds a place that makes sense to no one except the one who is feeling it. It is not unusual for a mate to become angry with their husband or wife for leaving them. I cannot count the number of widows who have told of suddenly blurting out, “How could you leave me like this?” I have not heard that from as many widowers, but men seem to hold their anger much closer to the vest than most women. Doing so can cause them to have a harder and longer grief journey. 

I remember one woman who got roped into going to the family Thanksgiving a few weeks after her husband died. She was not ready for such an event and found the small talk, and her husband’s death being the elephant in the room no one would acknowledge, to be more than she could bear. She retreated to the kitchen and began washing dishes to cover the fact that she had to get out of the room. She forgot that the window over the sink in her daughter’s house looked out on the cemetery where her husband was buried. Before she could stop herself she screamed, “How could you do this to me you S.O.B?”, language no one had heard her use before. The family were stunned and the grandchildren were running around saying that grandma was in the kitchen cussing grandpa cause he died.

Sometimes the anger is at least somewhat rational. If the mate neglected health concerns or had habits that were detrimental to their chance for a long life, then the mate has more of a reason for the anger.

Rational or not, the surviving spouse is left with some conflicted feelings and mixed emotions which are hard to understand or face. One minute they are crushed at the loss of their love and the pain of the loss seems unbearable. The next minute anger is stirring within them looking for someway to get out. 

How do you tell your friends or family that you are mad at your mate for dying? You know they will not understand at best and think you are crazy at worst. Those feelings rarely get spoken. They hide within us and leave us exhausted from the effort of keeping them hidden.

There are no magic words or formulas for dealing with the anger. We work our way through the feelings instead of finding ways to take them away or deny them. Understanding some principles might help some:

1. The presence of anger indicates growth. In the grief journey we seem to hit bottom, get angry and fight back. The anger means you are past the numb unreal period or stage of the grieving process. The anger can be a driving force to push you forward, so the feelings are  uncomfortable but necessary to the growth.

2. Grief is transition. Where you are today is not where you will be tomorrow. These feelings will pass with time.

3. Giving yourself permission to feel what you feel can reduce the tension. Fighting our feelings consumes too much energy. Telling ourselves we should not feel the way we do intensifies the feelings and makes them much harder to work through and thus lengthens their stay. We need to tell ourselves we should be angry, that we have the right to be angry, and that being angry does not mean we do not love or miss our loved one. 

4. Talking about it helps. Grief shared is grief reduced, and anger shared is anger released. We bleed off the feelings as we write or talk through the anger and frustrations caused by the loss.

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