“You have to tell people how to be of support to you.
I blinked, trying to process her words.
It was early October, and I was in Charleston for the second time that year.
These few days I was spending in Charleston had been needed.
It was work I had very little energy to do.
At first I was sad.
Then I got really angry.
I was so incensed it led to a seething rage.
Rage that became characteristic of much during the beginning of my grieving journey.
Western society and culture tells you how you should grieve.
It’s insidious and subtle, but the instructions and latent expectations are there.
Those first few hours of knowing she was no longer alive I’d spent in a transcendental daze.
I paced back and forth in that fancy hotel room devoid of any warmth.
I called my mother because I didn’t know who else to tell.
Didn’t know who else could possibly understand.
“Well, you know, everything happens for a reason,” she said.
I paused and delicately changed the subject and then made up an excuse to get off the phone.
I’d let that instance go and buried it in my psyche.
But there are so many other instances that followed in those first few months to make me more enraged.
Several friends ghosted me, not bothering to acknowledge my friend’s death.
Not even a blanket “I’m sorry for your loss” uttered to me.
To this day, I haven’t heard from them.
The abandonment and loud silence angered me.
The insensitivity angered me.
Western society and culture tells you how you should grieve.
It’s insidious and subtle, but the instructions and latent expectations are there.
Grieve quietly and in private.
Expect people to feel sorry for you and feel comforted in their sympathy.
Be gracious with people’s verbal fumblings, the empty phrases, and the Hallmark cards offered up.
There isn’t room for anything other than sadness.
But those who are bereaved, as I learned, can be really angry.
Anger was one of the things I saw talked about the most.
Anger and frustration most didn’t feel comfortable feeling, let alone expressing to those around them.
I felt vindicated knowing I wasn’t alone but also at a loss for what to do next.
My anger manifested in an abject form of isolation.
I pushed a lot of people away.
I cut others off.
I wasn’t vaguely interested in making any new friends.
Most of it felt warranted at the time.
Other parts were grief and sadness with nowhere else to go.
My rage helped me to feel connected to my friend.
If I wasn’t seething about the sucky hand I had been dealt, who was I?
And if I did disconnect from it, would it mean disconnecting from Precious and forgetting her?
It was stumbling upon a tweet that finally caused something to break and shift.
They read:
“Your anger surrounding your loss is welcome,” Devine wrotein the tweet.
“It’s healthy.
I remember crying when I read those words.
But I also felt this levity that I could accept my anger as a by-product of loss.
My anger was OK.
It was not some black sheep of the heart making me a shameful person.
How I had been coping with grief was the best way I knew how.
Almost eight months after Precious died, I found a therapist.
Grief, loss, and death affects everyone differently.
Anger had been my way of feeling less of a mess in unthinkable, devastating circumstances.
It was my process of getting to the heart of how loss affected me on a deep soul level.
And I’d encourage anyone grieving to open themselves up tofeeling the angerand befriending it.
Not shying away from how strong it may be when it is expressed.
Anger, like so many emotions, has something to teach us.
And if you’re like me, feeling your ire just may facilitate in your healing.
