Anger is a funny thing

Yesterday I was talking to a friend on the other side of the country who is dying. Can't visit except by phone. She's at home in palliative care with her husband taking care of her, she qualifies for MAID whenever she decides she wants to pull the plug. Right now she's trying to cope with a new set of drugs; every time the doctor switches her to something different there is symptom havoc until they get the right dose or discontinue. She said she was feeling sad and also angry to have her life cut short before she had what she felt was her rightful lifetime. Also a close friend of hers is angry that she is losing her best friend. So I've been thinking about anger and also about how I feel about what is happening with her. She's only a year older than me so I certainly understand her feeling about this being way too early to die.

We have been in and out of each other's lives for over half a century, I first met her living in residence at college in my first year. It was my first experience of living away from my parents home and she was certainly a good "partner in crime" so to speak for the kind of shenanigans one gets up to in those circumstances. We both left that college after only one year, she to another college in another city and me to a year in France. We met up again and had a few "drug experiences" together, then I met a guy and moved away to the other side of the country with him. A few years later the guy and I and our first kid were living in a log cabin back of beyond, and in the middle of the night she and her husband and dog showed up on our doorstep. They had hitchhiked and somehow managed to track us down although we had not exchanged any contact info since the last time we saw each other. They stayed a day or two and then hitchhiked on, I didn't see her or have any contact with her again until I was living here, on the opposite coast to where we met up in the middle of the night. Once again, no warning, no contact info exchanged, just here we were again. After a slightly longer visit we continued our lives in different directions in different places, and did not meet up again until decades later, on another coast as usual. By then, email and internet existed so tracking each other down was more doable. We continued to be in and out of each other's lives over the years, but at least now when we wanted to make contact we could do it a lot more easily.

I think Kurt Vonnegut's concept of a karass best describes the relationship.

Anyway, anger and sadness. I rarely feel angry these days, but I used to. I used to think I had "anger issues" which I had most likely inherited from my Dad, who in my opinion was also a very angry person. Although now I wonder about that.

Anger is a funny thing. Mostly I feel like we get angry when something bad happens that we have no control over, feel very frustrated about it, and end up trying to find someone or something to express that frustration at. Like when you hit your thumb with a hammer. Or when you can't extract yourself from the bad things that happen due to poverty or prejudice or injustice. You get overwhelmed and try to find a target for what you are feeling. Nine times out of ten the target is either misplaced or useless, the vented anger does nothing to change the situation, although maybe you feel a bit better for having expressed it. That's a big Maybe though. As often as not the expressed anger is just plain useless or actually makes things worse.

For me, the situation that I suppose was the cause of all my anger just changed, evaporated. No trigger, no venting. And then after a while I began to realize that I wasn't really a fundamentally angry person, just someone in a bad situation venting uselessly. That was probably my Dad's experience as well.

I do feel sad that I am losing a friend, and that there will be no opportunity to get together one last time, except by phone. I feel a little sad that I didn't make more effort to stay in touch, but at the same time grateful that I made contact before it was too late. Which it could so easily have been. Anger doesn't enter into it for me, but I can understand that her closest friend would feel that way.

Anger is a funny thing.