Just try to be angry and grateful at the same time. Hard, isn’t it?
It isn’t easy because focusing on one interferes with your ability to do the other.
Once we get past the numbness after our wife passes, we usually sink into a period of deep grieving that may last months or even years. During the early part of this process, we can become obsessed with everything we are angry about to the point that we can think of little else.
This may be anger at God, the doctors, the clergy, friends, family, neighbors, the insurance company, the hospital, and even at ourselves and our wives. This can be expressed in questions like:
- How could she leave me like this?
- Why didn’t God save her and take me first?
- Why couldn’t the doctors, hospital, clergy, and others save her?
- How could everyone be so insensitive?
- Why is it so hard to settle things with the bank, insurance company, state, etc.? All this damned paperwork is overwhelming.
- Everyone is deserting me, and I have nowhere to turn.
When we are immersed in this anger, it is hard to see anything else! If we remain in this painful place, healing and climbing out of this despair is extremely hard. Eventually, you will realize that no amount of anger will solve anything, much less help you move forward again. It becomes a huge weight, dragging you down and driving everyone you care for away from you. It colors your thinking and perpetuates itself by telling you that all this anger is justified.
A widow I was dating after my wife’s passing was immersed in anger over the failure of the hospital to properly treat her husband before he died. She had researched the care (or lack of care) he had received and felt strongly that she should pursue legal alternatives. This was holding her back from healing. Eventually, she learned to let it go and could move forward with her recovery and life.
Some anger is inevitable. But, recognizing it for what it is allows us to put it behind us after we have vented and gotten it out of our system. There may be times when your anger is justified and even needed to confront some challenges, but we need to recognize it for what it is and purposefully limit and control it… rather than letting it control us.
The best solution I have found is to focus on expressing gratitude instead of anger. If you want to remember, honor, and love your wife, “Gratitude” with a capital “G” is the best way to accomplish this. Gratitude for the:
- great life you built together,
- love and support she expressed for you,
- fun things you got to do together,
- your family and friends that you built together, and
- many memories and experiences you want to hold onto.
As you begin to focus on this gratitude, learn to make this the first thing you do when you wake up every morning and start your day. My trick was to write down the many things I was grateful for from my wife, my family, those supporting me, my community, and more. I put this list above the toilet, so it was the first thing I saw every morning when I got up. This helped me to get my head in the right place at the beginning of every day. You might try some version of this that works for you.
Good luck, my friends.
© Copyright 2023 Fred Colby
All rights reserved
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Fred Colby is the author of:
Widower to Widower which is available through all major booksellers and libraries.
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