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Coping with Loss: Anger
A Sermon Given
by the Reverend Roger Fritts
on February 13, 2000
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Twenty years ago I was serving as a minister of a church in
Kentucky. One Sunday after the service I was drinking coffee and
talking with some members of the congregation, when one member
of the church, a man about thirty years old came up to me and
started shouting at me. He was enraged at me for having moved a
couch and a chair from one room to another in the church. I had
done so a few days before with the help of others. I was leading an
adult discussion in the church and we had run out of chairs for
people to sit on. After the meeting I had not moved the couch and
the chair back to the lounge area of the church where they had
been. The young man raised his voice and began to use profanity
to attack my character. I told him that I would not stand there and
be verbally abused and I walked away.
A day or two later, I found out that this young man's mother had
just gone into the hospital the week before and been diagnosed
with cancer. I will never know for sure, but I suspect that the depth
of his rage was caused, not by my moving a chair, but by the news
of his mother's illness.
In her landmark book, On Death and Dying, Dr. Elizabeth
Kubler-Ross wrote that one reaction we humans have to loss is
anger. She said:
Few people place themselves in the patient's
position and wonder where this anger might come
from. Maybe we too would be angry if all our life
activities were interrupted so prematurely; if all the
buildings we started were to go unfinished, to be
completed by someone else; if we had put some
hard-earned money aside to enjoy a few years of
rest and enjoyment, for travel and hobbies, only to
be confronted with the fact that [we are dying].
What else would we do with our anger but let it out
on the people ... who rush busily around only to
remind us that we cannot even stand on our two feet
anymore.
Dr. Kubler-Ross is not the only person who has talked about anger
and death. In a book called The Bereaved Parent the author states
that rage often fills the parents' hearts. Not fully understanding
what is happening, they take their anger out on each other. Some
couples divorce within a year or two after the death of a child.
This reaction of anger when faced with loss, fits with my own
experience. When I was a minister in Illinois, I remember one
evening attending the annual meeting of the church. In the middle
of the meeting, a member of the congregation stood up and angrily
accused me of miss-using my professional expenses. This is the
kind of experience that drives people out of the ministry. That
evening several church leaders came to my defense. Later I sent
this man a letter including an itemized accounting of my expenses
and I put a message in the newsletter telling the congregation that
I would send an itemized account of my professional expenses to
anyone who requested it. But I remained puzzled about why this
man had made this public attack on me. Two years later, his wife
told me that the week before he attacked me, he had been told that
he would not receive tenure in his department at Northwestern
University. I will never know for sure, but I suspect that the depth
of his rage was caused by the news that he had just lost his job.
I am not immune to such behavior. Last fall I arrived at the church
on a rainy Sunday at 8:30 in the morning. There was a huge stack
of The Washington Post newspapers right in front of the
entrance to the
church, along with two cars and a crew of workers who were
sorting the newspapers for delivery. Newspaper delivery crews
often use the church sidewalk to sort newspapers at 5:30 in the
morning and they are gone long before people start arriving for
choir and church. Something had gone wrong that Sunday last fall,
however, and there was a mess blocking the front of the church.
I blew up. I stared yelling that they had to get their newspapers and
their cars out of way. They said they would and they started to put
the papers in the trunk of the cars. They did not move fast enough
for me. I continue to shout at them to move faster. I felt out of
control, yelling "get those papers out of here" in an indigent voice
of out rage I almost never use.
It was only later, as I reflected on the experienced, that the phone
call the night before might have played a part in my anger. The
night before I had gotten a call from Dusty Kriesberg telling me
that her 34 year old son Robin had died in a car accident. I was not
thinking about the phone call when I got angry about the
newspapers in front of the church, but later when I reflected on my
behavior I think there was a connection. That morning I was
feeling angry at the universe, at life, at God. My self righteous
anger found a target in some people who were trying to deliver the
Sunday Washington Post.
I have been talking about myself here, but perhaps you have had
a similar experience in your family, or with friends or at school or
work. Think back in your own life to the times that you have
experienced a kind of out of control anger in yourself and/or
others. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes you may be able
to connect this anger with an experience of loss, such as the loss
of a job or the end of a marriage, or an illness or a death.
When we go through big losses, like a death or a divorce or the
loss of a job, sometimes we are angry. We can lash out at our
children, our spouses, our friends, our doctors, our lawyers and in
my case, even the newspaper carrier. An experience of loss puts us
in touch with the ultimate insecurity of our human situation. In our
anger we are trying to recover control of our lives.
I find this anger scary. My fear has something to do with fear of
my own safety when I am attacked. But I am also afraid of my
own loss of control, afraid that when I express my anger I will say
and do things that I will regret later. Human anger may have been
more useful a few thousand years ago when we needed that surge
of adrenalin in our blood to help us survive. Today in modern
civilization the rush of adrenalin is less functional. Because the
anger we feel and we experience in others frightens us, we work
to manage our anger.
However, when it comes to big losses like death, Dr. Kubler-Ross
suggested it can help a great deal if we listen to the anger of
seriously ill persons. She found that it helped people who were
seriously ill, if they had a chance to talk about their anger.
After interviews with hundreds of seriously ill persons Dr. Kubler-Ross
came to the conclusion that the small losses of our lives are
the training ground. In dealing with small losses we learn the
coping skills we use when we are faced with large losses. Put
another way, we tend to die the way we have lived. If we rely
heavily on denial to help up cope with the small losses of life, we
will tend to rely heavily on denial when we struggle to cope with
the big losses. If we rely heavily on anger and indignation to cope
with the small losses of our life, we are likely to depend on anger
to get us through the big losses.
I have found it very helpful in my own life to remember that
sometimes when people are very angry, while they may appear to
be abusive and unfair in the words they use; in fact, they are doing
the best they can to cope with difficult news. Understanding this
helps me to provide for them what they need from me as their
minister or their friend.
What people who are expressing anger because of a loss need, is
someone who can listen to them and not be frightened away by
their intense feelings. This is not easy.
I have found that for me to listen to the anger of another person,
especially when some of that anger is aimed at me, I need to feel
secure within myself. I need to feel centered, focused, comfortable
with who I am. It helps even more if I feel good about myself,
confident that with all my faults, I am basically a good person. If
I feel this inside, then instead of reacting defensively to the anger
of another person, I can simply listen to them and show them that
I am listening by reflecting back to them the feelings I have heard
them express.
It matters to us that others make an effort to hear what we are
saying. When we are in a crisis, when we are experiencing a big
loss in our lives, it is even more important that we have people
around us who can listen to us, people who can listen to us even
when our emotions, our anger is out of control.
Twenty years ago when a church member attacked me for moving
a chair and a couch, the best response was not to defend or explain
or justify what I had done, but instead to simply tell him that I
heard the strong intense feelings he was expressing. If I had done
that, the conversation might have progressed to the point that he
might have told me about his mother's illness, and perhaps he
might have talked about the feelings of loss and fear and sadness
that underlined his anger. Instead I tried to explain why I moved
the chairs. It was days latter that I heard about his mother and it
occurred to me that this might have been the source of his anger.
A few years later when another church member criticized me for
the way I handled my professional expenses, the best response was
not to account for or rationalize or defend what I had done, but
instead to acknowledge that I heard the strong intense feelings he
was expressing. If I had done that, the conversation might have
progressed to the point that he might have told me about his loss
of his job. Instead I was so unsettled by his attack that I said
nothing at the meeting, and responded later in a letter defending
myself. Two years later I heard about his having lost his job. Then
it occurred to me that this might have been the source of his anger.
Fortunately I have also had the experience of being centered and
focused enough that I have been able to sit with people and listen
to their intense feelings. I remember visiting a woman in the
hospital. Her first words, when I came into her room we "Finally.
I have been here three days and I thought you were never going to
come to visit me!"
If I was feeling less centered I would have gone into an
explanation about why I had taken me three days to see her. But
instead I simply reflected back what I heard. "You are angry that
I did not get here sooner."
And from there we went into a conversation about how angry she
was with the nurses, the hospital, the doctors, other Unitarian
Ministers she had known and so on. There was a element of truth
to all her complaints. But eventually the anger decreased and after
a pause she said "being sick with this cancer sucks."
And I said, "yes, it sucks."
Not all of us will get angry in the face of a big loss in our lives.
Some people don't get angry. But many of us do. It is one of the
reactions we have in the face of loss. When we get angry it helps
if there is someone around who will hear us out. And if we are
with someone who is angry because of a terrible loss in their life,
we can help a great deal if we are able to sit with them and listen
to them and show by our response that we are listening and that we
are not overwhelmed by their angry feelings.
That day last fall an hour or two after I blew up at the newspaper
carriers, I realized that I had over reacted and I suspected that my
own reaction had to do with a death in our church family. I
decided to try to make amends. So I called The Washington Post
circulation desk hoping that they could put me in touch with
someone on the crew that I had shouted at. Unfortunately, by the
time I called the office had closed for the day. So with no way to
make amends, I fell back on an old prayer. I prayed that they
would forgive my trespasses as I forgive the trespasses of others.
Forgiveness is necessary here because few of us are perfect when
it comes to this issue of loss and anger. Each of us can only do the
best we can when it comes to expressing our angry grief. And we
can only do the best we can when it comes to listening to the anger
in others. We can always learn to do better, but most of us will fall
short of perfection. So as we struggle to cope with the great losses
that we face in this life, we need each other's forgiveness.
cluuc@his.com
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