12. The Stage of Grief I Hold Onto
I am generally an angry person. I think people who know me fairly well would totally agree. Over this last year particularly I have been living in a lot of anger. I am well aware that anger is one of the 5 stages of grief that you are to move through, but I am camped there. Of course I allow depression to live rent free inside me but anger is easier to feed.
I know when Brian died I went through weeks of denial, sort of feeling like he was working abroad, and I wouldn’t see him as much and I think for the smallest hot second I had a moment of acceptance on the 3 yr mark of Brian’s death, and I remember acknowledging to myself that very day that I thought “this is acceptance”… Six hours later I arrived back at my house and found Bret dead and my brain told me "how dare you begin to feel acceptance and this is your payment for it” which led me right back to anger.
I find my anger generally falls into four buckets:
The Universe
Bret
Brian
and myself
I would say most days at this point I’m vacillating back-and-forth between the universe and Bret and I understand logically that Bret died and that was not his choice and that a rational person would not necessarily be angry AT him and I suppose I should say the same thing for Brian. I don’t think he chose to die and leave his son fatherless, but there were some choices he made in his life that put him in this path and things that happened after his death that I learned that I feel have earned my anger. Logically my brain understands that for both of them death was not a choice they made but that still doesn’t stop me from being mad at both of them for leaving.
It also doesn’t stop me from being mad at The Universe and blaming the universe for doing this TO me with not one, not two, but three partners. With two of those losses coming so relatively close together and on the SAME DATE. The world robbed me of my life partner, the father my child, happiness, contentment, trust, safety, security, love and partnership. The world did this to me three times and I think that’s pretty damn unfair, so I’m mad at the world, I blame the universe and I curse it.
And I’m mad at Bret. I know he did not choose to leave me, to leave his daughter, his granddaughter, his mother, his family, or Ian but he did die. He died on the same day as Brian which caused more trauma. He died after he swore he would be there always, he would love me and he would be my partner. And he died, leaving me broken and grief stricken. Again.
All the things he took over in my life… and I let him, as you do with someone who shares your world and your life, trusting him to support me, that I let him do “for me”… that now he cannot…The way he left me on all levels and I trusted him on all levels and he took that away. Leaving me with the pictures in my head of that night and memories in my heart of the 12+ years we had spent together and all the love he showed me that is now just gone.
Brian didn’t stick around to see his son grow up. Brian left me with the responsibility of representing him in all the big and small moments of Ian‘s life. Brian left me to parent our child alone, and there’s also a lot of guilt with that, being the surviving parent, and that makes me so mad! Brian also kept things from me and had I known them we might’ve navigated our relationship in a completely different way and maybe not hurt each other so deeply. I didn’t have these answers until after he died, and so he robbed me and us of the opportunity to have a better trusting relationship with each other, and to create a sturdy, loving, stable situation to raise our child and not have him grow up in a broken home with a weekend dad. I know Brian loved Ian more than anything on this earth, as best he could. And now Ian doesn’t have that person, that champion, that love. For that I am so mad.
And lastly, I’m mad at myself for trusting these men and letting them in my life and letting them break me. I am mad at myself for not being better prepared to be without them. I’m mad at myself that somehow I couldn’t get through to Brian and save him from his demons or at least help him to carry them and that instead I gave up on him. I left him. I should have tried harder. I’m mad at myself for all the medical decisions I made when Brian was in limbo for those 10 days. He needed me to advocate for him and try to save him. The guilt I have of not making the right decision or not making a better effort to understand the decisions of his medical care plagues me to this day. There’s a part of me that feels if I just loved harder, cared more, was more present with him that he would’ve pulled through this and still be alive today. I’m mad at myself for not spending more time at the hospital. I’m mad at myself for those times that I thought going down there and sitting with him was a burden.
And I’m so mad at myself for my part in the demise of our relationship. I’m mad that I didn’t try harder, love harder, dig deeper, to understand what was going on between us and Im mad at myself that I couldn’t save my son’s father.
There’s also a lot of anger towards myself that Bret died under my care. He was there to help me and he wasn’t feeling well and I was very dismissive of him, because if he was sick, he couldn’t help me. I was snippy with him that morning. When I got home later he had died alone, I wasn’t there for him. I tried CPR, I tried calling 911 but nothing would revive him, and I feel very responsible for that and angry at myself that I didn’t save him. Didn’t love him enough… didn’t treat him well enough… Tempted the universe with my disregard for the significance of the day, that somehow I could have, should have altered the outcome. I did not take the care of him that I should have. I let his family down by not keeping him safe. That if I had been better, nicer, more loving to him this day would not have happened. And I’m mad at myself for trusting him, relying on him, handing parts of my life over to him.
And beyond all I’m mad at the world that this is happened to me, and yes, I understand the selfishness of that phrase, “happened to me”… In the grand scheme of things don’t I have the easier job of surviving rather than dying? But three times… what did I do to the Universe to deserve this? Why does this happened to me over and over again? What horrors have I done I wrong in this universe? Who do I owe amends to that this is my punishment?
And most days I answer that I owe myself all this grief. And round and round I go.