This is Part Two of a Five Part Series here at A View.

Psychologists, including Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her definitive work On Death and Dying, teach us there are five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

First, here’s an AI sourced summary:

• Denial: A natural reaction to loss, denial can help people slow down the grieving process and avoid feeling overwhelmed. It can also be a way to try to understand what’s happening.
• Anger: A common reaction to the frustration of no longer being able to live in denial, anger can feel like an emotional outlet as people adjust to a new reality. It can also provide temporary structure and a connection to the person who died.
• Bargaining: People may try to change the circumstances that are causing their grief, such as hoping that things will improve if they take certain actions.
• Depression: A stage of grief
• Acceptance: A stage of grief where people find control and figure out how to proceed 

PART TWO:

Anger:

(a bit more serious this time)

This is a tricky one since there are several levels involved. On the one hand we might lash out at others in some mind-bending way to “control” something, anything, as an emotional response to a death we had no control over which left us feeling helpless and abandoned. We might get angry at our children for the simplest of things to evade the reality of our own parents’ passing. Or we might be angry at the departed for departing, particularly when their exit is far too soon, burdening us with some sense of guilt for still being here, for slowly forgetting, for moving on. It’s a bit more rational to be angry when the death was self-inflicted. I’ve known several people who ignored that canon fixed against self-slaughter and ended their sea of troubles. Most notably a high school buddy who, after several attempts, succeeded when we were in our thirties. But I’ve learned much about mental health since then and it is hard to be angry at someone whose actions were quite decisively beyond their mental capabilities to control, despite what we wish.

In fact, anger either at the departed or at others because of the departed seems irrational at best. But it happens. For instance, my college friend Dave pissed me off. In the case of his death I blew right though denial and landed quite solidly in the deep end of anger. I’m not sure this is the type of emotion Betsy K-Ross was talking about, but give this a thought:

Some background. I knew Dave since the fall of 1979 and have written about him before on these pages. We ran a radio show together, worked at the campus newspaper together and the college radio station together, just him and me at 5 am for four years, Dave on news me spinning music, and we bonded during those pre-dawn hours in the chill of western New York. I stayed at his house in Buffalo on many occasions and became the “fourth son” of the family. We went on retreats together and relied upon each other for comic relief during pressing times throughout the next forty-five years.

Dave was talented but when he was faced with self-doubt, especially when he battled depression, he would call, and we’d talk until two or three in the morning. I once walked out of a reading in Virginia just after ten pm and he had called six or seven times. I returned the call and sat in the parking lot until dawn talking about all the reasons we keep breathing. He had no way of knowing I faced my own demons, and that he kept me going as well. I told him, but often Dave was not listening. That’s hard to explain. But we finished that conversation that morning laughing, laughing hard and even singing, “Old Friends.” And we talked about traveling to Australia together and writing a book. We both knew that would never happen; but talking about it pushed the other stuff out of view, and that’s why we stayed on the phone so long. We had to wait until our verbal tide came in and washed the rest away.

In the years since the introduction of the cell phone, we texted each other no less than three times a week. Sometimes it would be just some song lyrics that made us think of each other, sometimes a photo of the day. To be honest, I didn’t always answer when he called because he tended to ramble right past my “I have to go now, Dave” interjections, so I preferred the texts.

In late April, I texted him a simple hello and asked how he was doing. A random thing without lyrics or puns. He responded that he was fine, just a little tired, and he looked forward to talking soon. In mid-May the phone beeped, and it was a text from Dave. I opened it to find an obituary about Dave sent by his widow. My hands were shaking. I immediately called and we talked for a long time. Dave had been diagnosed with kidney cancer the previous September, but by the time they found it the disease had already metastasized rendering him a death sentence. “He fought hard the whole way,” she told me. He didn’t want anyone to know but his immediate family.

Pardon me on this one but Fuck You Dave (yeah, that’s anger right there). Seriously? First, the rationale for such silence is he thought he could beat it and didn’t want anyone to know, or he didn’t want people pouring sympathy all over him which he would hate, or he wanted to just focus on family, his beautiful three adult children and their own kids. Yes, I really do get that.

But those who exit without allowing others the chance to say goodbye or tell them how much they meant or at the very least acknowledge that you might not be alive if it wasn’t for him, just seems a tad selfish. This all came parallel to a deeply open knowledge of Letty’s impending death with the chance to tell it all to each other. Of the two, openness wins hands down. Are you kidding me? It’s hard not to tell someone what you wanted to say when they just go away for a while, never mind forever. When I told Letty of Dave’s passing, just two months before hers, she was even more sure of her decision to expose her impending death to those she knew. No questions at all.

After I hung up with Dave’s widow I called Fr. Dan, who himself had but two more months to live and didn’t know it, and I told him the news. He was dumbfounded. He had spoken to Dave just two weeks earlier and all Dave told him was “I haven’t been feeling well; please keep me in your prayers.”

This forced me to wonder what I would do. Of course, my life has been an open book for quite some time, but it is more than that. Eddie got hit by a car, Fr Dan died in mid-sentence about his plans for the weekend, someone we love right now may not know what is next. Why aren’t we leaving it all on the table? Why do we keep our feelings, those deep, often embarrassing to admit out loud ones, inside? I can testify that of all the emotions I have about Letty’s passing, none of them is anger.

Dave on the other hand; I’m just pissed for him not giving me the chance—and he could have; I mean he knew what was about to happen—to tell him what I wanted to, and perhaps he had a few things he would have liked to say.

Well, lesson learned though. I just might dump pleasantries on you at any given chance just in case one of us exits the stage in the middle of the third act.

Still, Kubler-Ross addresses another anger in addition to the one focused at the bastards who died. This is the one where we feel helpless and lost, and someone once a part of our daily routine is now absent in all ways, and there’s no way to control that absence, so we channel that thorny emotion into one we can control which might relieve some of our anxiety at floundering without someone: Anger at ourselves.

Well, yeah. I’m angry at myself every time someone I love dies. Angry for not being there more often, angry at not having said what I so easily could have but simply didn’t bother to say. Angry at myself for getting angry at them in the past for the stupidest reasons. Angry at my aloofness and at my over-dependence, at my distance and my closeness and my silence and for saying too much.

Angry at myself for sitting quietly at the bay and watching the sun slip up above the distance and giving me another chance. EKR is clear about this one: the anger of guilt.

I’m aware of the psychoanalytical responses to this; please don’t load up the discussion page with comments about carrying on and blah blah blah. I know, really, I know. I get it. BTDT.

But understand: I welcome the anger at myself when someone dies. I think we all should get angry at ourselves when we didn’t tell someone how much they meant to us, how much we cared, how much we still do. It forces us to not make that mistake again. It impels us to be open with those we can, now, while time has allowed us to remain part of this ongoing brilliance of exquisite life.

Don’t keep your death to yourself while you are still alive.

Finally, Liz Ross writes that often anger is directed at some Deity for allowing the death to happen, particularly a premature death which for my part is the case for, well, all of them. This is the most ridiculous anger of all and I’m bored with hearing it. Listen, if your faith suggests death is all part of some greater plan, than your anger is contradictory and quite dumb as you’re now getting angry at a God who has enough control to decide death and when it happens to each of us. If you don’t believe that’s how it happens then move on, it’s no one’s fault.

I miss Dave. I miss his texts and more than a few times I have reached for the phone to write, “How terribly strange to be seventy,” in reference to our plans to sit on a park bench when we reach that age and sing Paul Simon’s song. But then I remember he fell shy by seven years. When I’m thinking clearly, I’m not angry at Dave; that’s foolishness. I’m not angry at some God or even myself. No, when I’m thinking clearly, anger is not part of any equation; only love, and the times we could have loved more.

Thanks Dave. Good on ya.