Rage

If I had to use a single word to describe my personal grief journey, it would be rage.

It’s a word shrouded with stigma, misused and often misunderstood. Considered by most to be a negative attribute, rage is commonly associated with various forms of maladaptive behavior.

And it’s true – tantrums, profane outbursts, and even acts of extreme violence are often fueled by rage.

But it can also fuel something else: healing.

I freely confess that my rage has not always been productive. It’s not an emotion with which I frequently contended prior to Kailen’s death, but afterward…oh, afterward…wandering aimlessly through a world I no longer understood and that no longer understood me, rage became an intimate part of my daily life.

In ‘The Wasteland’, the not-so-affectionate title I’ve assigned to my time in exile, rage sought to consume me. I was furious that my wife was dead; fiercely angry at my friends and the abandonment I felt; violently impassioned against the injustice of it all.

I was lonely, confused, and broken beyond recognition, and in the tear-soaked crucible of all that pain, a deep rage was forged. Violent and untamed, like a maelstrom rising up within me.

In the early days of grief, rage isn’t helpful. It can lead to unhealthy coping strategies which only serve to amplify pain and isolation.

A very select few ever witnessed my rage in that nascent, unbridled form. And because they stubbornly loved me through that season, consciously and courageously choosing to stand beside me and comfort me despite my unpleasantness, my rage eventually became something useful.

An ally in place of an enemy.

You see, rage can be defined in a number of ways. Every definition is correct, but none of them stand alone. Grief-related rage occurs in a progression.

The first and most common definition is as an explosive form of anger. It is this type of rage that we associate with maladaptive behavior and violence, and it is the form which typically manifests in early-grief. It did for me. And if you’ve experienced great loss, especially out-of-order loss, it probably will for you, too.

The second definition casts rage as a verb – “to move with great intensity.” And it is in this precise moment, when your rage become a verb, that it starts to be useful.

As grief progresses, your pain may be so great and long-tenured that you start to feel numb; instead of loneliness, confusion, and brokenness, you may begin to feel nothing at all. This is a very dangerous season of grief. A time when it’s tempting to withdraw and surrender to the magnitude of the hurt. A time when apathy sets in.

A time when it would be easier to give up.

But rage is the antithesis of apathy. When I was tempted to withdraw, to surrender, to give up the fight, it was rage that galvanized my resolve. It was rage, among other things, that kept me moving forward. And it did so with great intensity.

The third and most noble definition of rage is also a verb, but it takes it one step further – “to prevail forcefully.” 

This is the moment when rage is not only useful, but healing. This is rage in its most mature form, when it has finally come-of-age and fulfilled its true purpose.

It has progressed from its adolescence as violent anger and explosive volatility in early-grief, on to a galvanizing force in the all-encompassing apathy of seasoned grief, and finally to the fuel that forcefully propels us to victory.

It is this victorious form of rage that the poet Dylan Thomas references in his most famous work, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.

And it’s his words that I leave with you this week, a source of inspiration and encouragement both for hurting hearts and all those who stubbornly love them, who courageously come alongside them in the ugliness and brutality of their grief and refuse to move, who bear the weight of their anger and see it through to victory, who help them rage against the dying of the light.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

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