Anger Management

The classic work on death and dying, by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, lists the stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It's now strongly disputed whether this really applies to bereavement - the original book, which I started reading, was about patients approaching death. But before Jen's death, I took this to be a specific anger - either with some part of the medical profession, or more generally as "who is to blame?". There were moments of frustration with Jen's treatment, and the advice we received, but that faded rapidly in the face of the onslaught of Jen's last months.

I find now that the struggle to manage anger is still an important element in our lives, but that its connection with grief is subterranean, indirect. Thus we are all surprised by our disproportionate outbursts of anger over apparently unrelated matters. For me some of this comes from the pressure of the situation - too much to do in too little time, and the relentless pace of being a single parent. There's no escape from the weaknesses of my parenting, and there's no-one else to take the heat and let me cool off.

At times it's as though my emotional resources and my patience are stretched ever more thinly, until I snap over some trivial incident. I remember getting quite upset over the telephone with a woman from Centrelink who was comparing the bureaucratic effect of Jen's death to a separation (in terms of having to apply for FTB payments). The boys unfortunately suffer most from my lack of patience. The symptoms of burnout are quite similar - the American Christian leader Bill Hybels writes in a book about how he found himself getting impatient with a disabled person slowly negotiating a doorway , and realised that his lack of compassion was a warning sign.

But deeper down there's also a sense of unfairness with the whole situation - why did Jen have to die and deprive the boys and I of many years with her? I don't have any adequate reason apart from the generally messed-up nature of the world. It is that emotional perception of unfairness that can also spill over into an anger that has no one to blame, not even God, and so I latch on to the immediate but unrelated frustration. I don't offer that as a justification, only an observation. Even though with Jen's death I've lost a significant part of who I was, the struggle now is not to lose hold of what matters most. I don't write this to elicit sympathy, and I most certainly don't want advice. At best I hope it's a glimpse into the parallel universe of the bereaved.