Anger When the Winds of Grief Howl

SOMETIMES, especially within the brutality of loss, we feel “Ah, What the hell!” Expletives are muttered or shouted as we cannot believe in our emotional stupor why for or what has happened.

It’s loss. Somehow life, in the flash of a surreal moment, a hearkening tragedy, has turned sideways.

It’s hard to write about starkness when it’s not your present experience, but there is something about being blindsided that is once-and-for-all. It never leaves your memory. It leaves its own requiem mass in the heart.

What is it like to be smacked around the head by a tragedy, first hand?

We are likely to experience every dark emotion conceivable – every anxious attack, every numbness, every depressed nonchalance, every sense of ripping heartache.

What can we say about sleep when being awake is its own tragedy? What can we do when we would be angry within if only we had the energy? What can we say or think when there are no answers; when the mystery of life is too elusive to contemplate?

Losses evoke a sense of soul anger. How can such things be done against us?

Dazed confusion gives way to fatigue and a lack of sleep helps not one little bit. Tiredness swarms with grief and our bones wither without hope.

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Turning home amidst such torment that causes visceral anger seems hardly relevant. Home is a concept far too foreign – so far as home being a sanctuary place of the heart.

Anger, whether it’s openly expressed or shrouded in depression, is the natural consequence of loss. We shouldn’t judge or condemn ourselves, though we are sure to wonder when we overstep the mark.

We are angry because someone or something dear has been taken from us. It stands to reason we will be forlorn of mood.

If we swapped places with the next person – complete with our entire context, including our personalities – the next person would respond in much the same way. God wants us to experience his compassion for times like these. We need it, and, despite our anger, we can rest in the Presence of God. We need rest.

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Losses evoke a sense of soul anger. How can such things be done against us? Anger, whether it’s openly expressed or shrouded in depression, is the natural consequence of loss. We can receive God’s gracious healing of acceptance – even in anger – in knowing that the experience of grief requires anger.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.