The Anger Side of Grief

I tried to "google" the different stages of grief after my brother's funeral. It just made me mad and I stopped looking to the Internet for answers that will never come. I do remember in my research that there is supposed to be an anger stage of grief. This makes sense to me because I reached the anger stage of grief quite easily on my own. Actually, I believe that I may have taken up residence in this stage.

I had even suggested to my sister that she buy two sets of boxing gloves and whoever had a problem with anything for the rest of forever could meet me in a dark alley and I would be glad to school them. I was angry at every doctor who ever saw my brother, every medication he was prescribed to take instead of investigating the cause of his depression, the funeral director for a ridiculous suggestion for music and various friends and family members who dared to suggest that my brother's death would be a mere event that I "got through". Oh yes. I am quite familiar with the anger side of grief in the past few weeks.

But out of every flash of anger, each rage of emotion that crossed my heart, I never was mad at my brother. Several people have suggested that it will come; that it is customary, acceptable and even appropriate to be angry with those who take their own lives. But I have read my brother's journal, his emails, his text messages and his notes to himself. And there is no way on this side of heaven that in the midst of his depression and loneliness that I could ever be angry with him. Am I devastated by missing him? Absolutely. Angry with myself that I did not know the depths of his sorrow? I will be for the rest of my days. But mad at my baby brother for fighting off demons that I have never understood, nor fought off myself? No.  Never.

How could I be angry at someone who fought so hard to conceal what he battled, so that no one else would know? Why would I, for one second be cross with a soul that would have never harmed another living creature? And how could spend one minute of my given breath being upset that my brother's struggle had ended in any other fashion than him back in the Father's arms?

I may forever be in the angry stage of grief, but it will never be because I am angry with my brother.