The ABC’s Of Grief – A is for Anger & Acceptance

anger – n. A strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.  

acceptance – n. An attitude of accepting a difficult or unpleasant situation because it cannot be changed or avoided.

Nobody experiences grief without experiencing anger. Anger is something that slowly brews in the background while you deal with the immediate shock of loss. There isn’t an exact time when it comes to a full boil, it’s different for each of us but it will happen and when it does, you better find a way to control it. Your anger may be justified or not, it may make sense or be completely illogical  but one thing is for sure, you must learn to live with it or else you will be consumed by it.

For me, anger took a while. Early on, I thought I could deal with the circumstances of Mack’s death without getting angry, I was wrong. I understand now that anger is part of the grief journey, it’s presence must be acknowledged. Today, I don’t live with anger on a daily basis, however, there are some days when it shows up either unexpectedly or with knowing trepidation and I am forced to keep it in check. This doesn’t mean that I don’t allow myself to feel it or react to it, I have just figured out how long to let it linger before I coax it back into it’s cage. Like so many other facets of grief, it takes time to learn to control your anger. Like a fuse, you have to allow it to follow it’s course and then fade out. As I think about it now, I’m only fully realizing how much time has been spent in the past six and a half years, learning to manage my grief.

In order to find peace with your anger, you will first need to accept the ‘new normal’ (common grief term) that is now your life. After a loss, especially the loss of a child, you feel as if you will never adjust, as if you will never be able to accept living life without your child.  My definition of acceptance does not in any way imply that you accept what has happened and move on. No, it means that you reach a point in your grieving when you feel as if you can move forward. This milestone in the grieving process can be achieved, I know because I’m there, but I had to come to terms with some very hard, cold facts before I was able to get to this place. They include the following:

1. I had to accept that I would never see Mack again in this lifetime. Brutal I know, I’m shaking my head as I write this but such an important hurdle to jump.

2. I had to realize that laughing out loud, being distracted and not thinking about Mack every waking second was NOTHING to feel guilty about. You have to learn to live with the altered life that is now yours. You will be grieving for the rest of your days so distractions are crucial and necessary for survival.

3. I had to accept that from now on, I would deal with sad days, bad days and blue days. These will always pass but they will also never stop coming.

4. I had to teach myself to stop asking ‘why’ and ‘what if’. I don’t even go there anymore; there are no answers that are going to satisfy and you may possibly drive yourself crazy.

5. I had to accept that life is not fair. I have heard and spoken these four words so many times in the course of my lifetime but they never seemed as true as when I lost Mack,

This is a process, a journey and each point reflects a stage that I worked hard to get to. During grief, you are tested time and time again and you falter, slip and stumble many times along the way. For so long, it’s one step forward and two steps back but at some point, months and months even years down the road, you will come to a junction and have to decide which direction to go in. Those that continue along the same path just can’t seem to push forward, they can’t seem to reach any degree of acceptance and live in constant sadness. I spent some time in this state of misery, we all do while we’re dealing with intense grief. I can’t imagine living the rest of my life like that. I have a daughter and a husband who need me to be present in their lives. Ruby knows that I am always there for her, she knows that she can depend on me to be her mother. Even while learning to live without Mack, I never stopped being her mother just like my mother never stopped after my brother Ronnie died. We do it because we need the people in our lives to know that they still matter otherwise damage can be done and this type of damage, unintentional as it is, can leave permanent scars.

I hope that if and when you ever come to a crossroads on the grief journey, you choose to veer off course and start walking in a new direction that will allow you to manage your grief and live your life simultaneously. It takes a long time to reach this balance and at the same time understand that as balanced as you are, the sad, bad and blue days will always temporarily tip the scales. It’s not easy and it will demand a tremendous amount of strength but you already know that you possess this strength, you couldn’t have made it this far without it.