Anger

Some say there are five stages of grief, others say there are seven, but most all agree that anger is one of them and, for me, it has been the loudest and most startling.

I have never been a person who gets angry easily and anger is not an emotion I feel regularly. Sure, I get annoyed or frustrated but I had never experienced the seething white hot rage that rose up within me when Robin got sick and after she died. It was unexpected, like a violent burst of lightening in a grey cloud.

In the months following her death sometimes it was like I was having an out of body experience, watching myself slowly smolder from the inside with a quiet but dangerous infuriation that I feared might burst out.

Johnnathan would ask me “What are you angry about? Who are you angry with?” And I thought hard about this.

I was angry with the disgraceful public health system for making it so difficult to navigate appointments and testing and communications; for not having found her tumor 8 years prior when she complained about a lump in her abdomen; for taking almost four weeks to get her biopsy and results back, delaying her treatment. I was angry about emergency rooms being some of the most broken places in our society and for being yelled at by a crazy woman in the middle of the night because she thought I cut her in line when I was asking a nurse for a blanket for Robin; I was angry at the man who pulled a gun on us at 1am in the morning on the way home from that same ER. I was angry at the difficulty in getting Robin a walker and a wheelchair and that her insurance company would call to speak with her to tell her portions of her care were not covered even though they knew she was in the neurological ICU for a stroke at that very moment. I was angry for the difficulty in getting her the opioid medications she needed to make her pain bearable and for the continual and constant follow up required so she didn’t slip through the cracks of the massive machine that is the deplorable US healthcare system.

I was angry with other family members for not doing more and taking care of her like I thought they should.

I was angry with Robin that she didn’t take care of herself earlier and go to her doctor when she felt sick sooner.

I was angry with myself because we grew so close at the end, and we wasted years not being close over stupid, pointless and trivial disagreements.

I was angry because I felt like this beautiful life that carried and raised my wonderful husband was cut short. I was so furious that he wouldn’t get to talk to her every day, to share the things he was excited about with her, to do projects with her, to get her opinions on his business and to be inspired creatively by one another like they always had.

I was angry with God for allowing this to happen, for not miraculously healing her and for taking her from us.

It wasn’t one thing or one person, it was none of them.

It was only me.

I was bursting and raging, rebelling against my version of the way life should be.

The hole that is left when someone you love dies is so very specific to you. The hole that Robin left in my life gets filled with my emotions and actions as I process losing her. These days, I don’t gape into the black cut-out of where she should be standing, enraged that she is not there, but I did a few months ago.

These days, it’s easier to smile and cry at the same time. Now I can remember what a blessing almost every single nurse we came into contact was, how even though it was hard, we got Robin the treatment she needed. I can see how family members were doing the best they could have at the time, how she was, how I did.

I remembered that while we prayed for a miraculous healing, we also asked that if God planned to take her home that He would do it quickly, so she didn’t have to suffer long. From the day of her initial diagnosis to the day she met Him in Heaven barely 10 weeks had passed.

The God who created this universe was not and is not threatened by my anger and He patiently responded in love as I thrashed in His arms.

Although the anger has subsided quite a bit, if I think about her swollen eye or her tears when she was unable to speak after her stroke or the conversation we had when she said she wanted to go back to Eagle Grove one last time, the anger that made me once grit my teeth can come swiftly like a summer storm, an after-burst of lightening that remains in the sky, an imprint that blinds me momentarily.

But as it goes with storms in August, the thunder passes quickly, and I can glimpse ribbons of light through the clouds again.