Anger in grief

I want to talk about anger in grief. Emotions and grief change pretty much daily sometimes multiple times a day. In fact, near the beginning I used to describe it as a wave, which I think is still a good analogy but now I kind of describe it, as almost like a sound frequency wave more than an ocean wave because it just changes sometimes literally from minute to minute.

Anger has also changed over the weeks and months for me. It started out as anger in the sense of all those typical questions: why me? why us? why Ric? and I guess just feeling angry at the world and cancer in general. Then it changed to be more specifically anger towards Ric. Sorry Ric! Even though rationally, I know it was by no means his choice to leave us or to get ill, I still had some moments just feeling super angry that he left me, that he left us. Angry that I have to be alone, angry that J doesn’t have his dad, angry that I have to parent alone. Even little things like angry that I have to do all the house chores, and life admin stuff on my own. Sometimes that very specific anger towards Ric meant that for some time I couldn’t look at pictures of him without getting angry and it didn’t bring me joy anymore to look at pictures and videos.

I know that anger directed towards him isn’t really warranted and would make more sense to directed towards cancer in general but it feels like not a tangible thing to be angry at cancer, because it’s such a big evil in the world, and it was easier almost to be angry at the person that I know best. But then, because emotions in grief are that wave, it changes again, and the anger goes away and I’m able then to look at photos and videos and it make me happy and I’m not angry at him anymore. Then i’ll have periods of time where I feel pretty neutral about everything and I guess pretty fine, but then the sadness comes again. Mostly now it’s sadness because I am alone. I don’t have my person and I think I spoke about this before but it’s not a loneliness as in you don’t see people or interact with people throughout the day and I mean I’m not lonely because I have a little two-year-old with me at all times! And I mean, he’s great company but it’s the fact that you don’t have your person and the person that understands you the most. You don’t have those inside jokes or little cuddles to share with someone or you don’t have that person that has your back anymore and that’s what makes me the most sad. As well as the fact that J will have to grow up without his dad, but being the age that he was when we lost Ric, I suppose it’s not going to make a difference to him to not have a dad around because it’s all that he’s ever going to know so I feel a little bit in that sense that it’s been easier.

But coming back to the anger it’s recently changed to something a bit different for me, and although it was directed at Ric again, it wasn’t anger at him it was that I was just annoyed and angry that he was still making me feel sad and upset with these things that come with grief. I was sitting on the sofa, looking at a photo of him talking to him and I told him to leave me alone, well, I wasn’t as polite as that actually.. I believe I told him to fuck off actually and just leave me alone. To stop making me feel sad and stop making me miss him and that was kind of a new feeling, and a weird one as well, because well for starters, I’ll never ever be able to forget him because how can you? I don’t think you could ever forget a person that has such an impact on your life and that you shared 7/8 years with. And although I don’t personally see Ric a lot in J, I know other people do and he is his son so I suppose it is like a little mini Ric. Actually sometimes I can definitely see him in certain facial expressions so I can’t ever forget about him. Of course I can’t, but I almost had a feeling that I wanted to forget so that I didn’t have to have this grief anymore. I didn’t want to have this reoccurring sadness or this reoccurring anger or the story of having to say yeah J’s dad died.

So yeah, I was mad at that whole thing I guess, mad that I have to grieve, mad that grief is part of my life and I suppose I aimed that towards Ric.

And I guess personally, I have never really been a person who has a big outlet for anger, so I sometimes haven’t been sure exactly what to do with it. I suppose near the beginning it would sometimes come out as needing to hit or scream into my pillows. I don’t feel the need to do that anymore. It’s like I can sit with my anger and really feel it and then it goes away. Also near the beginning I had recently started playing tennis again and I used to think of tennis as a way to channel my anger but that wasn’t very productive because I would get emotional and upset and then my tennis wasn’t very good because I was just trying to hit the ball as hard as possible which didn’t really work. So now I sort of just sit with the anger and really feel it, I talk to Rick about it and tell him to go away ha ha and then move on.

Another way I’ve experienced anger lately is being angry with the fact that I have too parent alone. Now that J has hit 2 years I think we’re going through a sleep regression and so bedtime is taking longer than usual. The other day I had planned to do all these things once he was asleep, I was going to do a workout, I was going to wash my hair and have a nice dinner but then bedtime took over two hours, and I was getting frustrated and it sort of spoiled a nice day that me and J had had.

I just want to add that I actually have improved and evolved with my way of dealing with that form of frustration towards J and I don’t get cross with him anymore. I am happy with that, but I can’t help but think in those moments that if you have the second parent there at home with you that at least then I could get on with the dinner and do my work out and Ric could’ve sat in the room with him or vice versa and I could really focus on just making sure J was OK and happy falling asleep. I wouldn’t feel like I needed to rush out of the room to go make dinner or do all these things because we would be a team, a pair doing them. That sometimes is really hard to deal with and also to deal with the fact that I don’t know what it would’ve been like to be a team doing this. I’m assuming that it would be easier but I don’t know that for sure.

There was also another thing on the similar topic of not having the other parent around in that I wanted to go and watch my friends play tennis in a tournament the other weekend but I only had about an hour where he could stay with somebody else and so I didn’t get to watch all the matches.

I was driving back home to get him and I was just feeling really angry that I can’t just ask if he can have a day with dad so that I can go and do my own thing. I feel it would be pretty normal to ask for him to have a daddy day and they go and do guy things together and then I can go and play tennis or I can go and watch my friends play tennis, but my reality is that I can’t do that. I am on my own so I have to always work around either having him with me all the time or work around the schedule of people who are able to help me with him. And it just sucks to not have the other fully responsible parent around.

So yeah I guess that’s my current take on how I have felt anger in this journey so far, it’s certainly not the only emotion that you feel with grief and I do feel a little bit like all these emotions, anger sadness, fear, loneliness, etc are always sort of combined in one all the time, every day. But then you get the stand out ones anger and sadness that sort of have their moment to come to the forefront for a little bit and then it goes back to just being a mixed bowl of all of them. That’s kind of how I would describe it.

I would say that my sports help me a lot to deal with my emotions, I love my tennis now and it’s always a good day when I have tennis.

I am also really enjoying going to the gym too when I get to go. So I guess just finding the things that bring me back to being me, that allow me a little bit of time away from being a widow and a solo parent.

I hope that anyone else going through something similar can also find the things that bring you back to being you. It is super important.