There’s an old saying about speaking no ill of the dead. It’s a strange rule when you think about it. Someone dies and apparently we’re supposed to forget the arguments, the disappointments, the things they said or did, and all the little ways they could drive us up the wall.
Death doesn’t suddenly make someone a different person. And it doesn’t magically change the relationship you had with them.
You might be angry about something they did years ago. Perhaps there were things you never got to say, questions you never got to ask, or a disagreement that now has no chance of being resolved. You might be furious about the circumstances of their death, or the decisions they made beforehand. You might even be angry with them simply for dying and leaving you to deal with everything.
Then comes the guilt. Because how can you think badly of someone you miss so much? Particularly when everyone around you seems to remember them rather more fondly than you do.
Sometimes anger becomes more noticeable as time goes on. In the early days, there may be so much to organise, so many people to deal with, that you barely have time to think. It’s only later, when you’re sorting through their belongings, dealing with the consequences of decisions they made, or facing something you wish they were still here to help with, that the anger really starts to surface.
There’s a psychological reason anger can be such a powerful part of grief. Death leaves us with very little control, and anger can be a response to that powerlessness. It gives us something to push against, even when there’s absolutely nothing we can do to change what’s happened.
But anger isn’t always a disguise for sadness or helplessness. Sometimes you’re angry because something genuinely hurt you, or because the situation was unfair. Those feelings don’t become less legitimate because someone has died.
It can help to ask yourself what you’re actually angry about, without immediately trying to justify it or talk yourself out of it. You might discover several different things tangled together, some of which have very little to do with the death itself.
You can love someone, miss them terribly, remember the good things and still be angry with them. None of those feelings cancels out the others.
You don’t owe anyone a tidied-up version of your relationship just because the person has died.