Grief has never arrived in an orderly way for me.
We are often taught that grief moves through stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It can sound almost reassuring, as though grief follows a predictable path and, if we keep moving, we will eventually reach the end.
But grief has not worked that way for me.
The feelings may be real, but the sequence is not.
Years later, they still appear without warning. Sometimes they are tied to a scent, a song, a photograph, or a story. Sometimes I understand what stirred them. Other times, I do not. They simply arrive, pulling me back into something I thought I had already survived.
Recently, anger arrived.
Not irritation. Not frustration.
Anger.
The kind that settles deep inside your body and refuses to leave. The kind that makes it difficult to think about anything else.
I was so angry at my person for all the damage they caused and all the wreckage I was left to carry. The sheer magnitude of what they did hit me like a freight train. It jarred something inside me and fueled an anger that stayed for a while.
I have been angry. Really angry.
Angry about the lives that were taken.
Angry about the people who were forever changed.
Angry about the questions that will never be answered.
Angry about the relationships that fractured under the weight of what happened.
Angry that one person’s actions could reach into so many lives and leave damage behind for other people to manage.
Angry that all this wreckage is now ours to wade through.
Sometimes I feel as though I become stuck beneath the weight of it. I can see the way forward, but I cannot quite reach it. Every responsibility, every painful memory, every unanswered question, and every consequence becomes part of a heap that is difficult to climb out of.
And then there is another complicated truth.
I still love my person.
That love does not erase the harm they caused. The harm does not erase the life they lived before it. Both truths exist, even when holding them together feels impossible.
Perhaps that is one of the hardest parts of murder suicide loss. Anger is rarely simple. I am not only angry with the person who caused the devastation. I am also grieving someone I loved. I miss who they were to me while struggling to live with what they did.
Sometimes the anger feels like a betrayal of that love.
Other times, the love feels like a betrayal of everyone who was harmed.
Neither is true.
My anger does not mean I have stopped loving them. My love does not mean I excuse what they did.
Anger is not evidence that I am grieving incorrectly. It is not proof that I have failed to heal or somehow moved backward. It is a human response to an unbearable reality.
What many of us call the stages of grief are not steps we complete. Grief is not a staircase. We do not reach acceptance and become permanently untouched by anger, sadness, bargaining, or disbelief.
We may experience acceptance in the morning and rage by nightfall. We may feel joy one day and be brought to our knees by a song the next. We may carry grief gently for months, only to find ourselves beneath its full weight again.
That does not mean the healing disappeared.
It means grief is still part of us.
I am learning that I do not have to solve my anger the moment it appears. Sometimes I need to name it. Sometimes I need to speak it aloud to someone who will not judge me or rush me toward forgiveness. Sometimes I need to write it down, move my body, cry, rest, or simply admit that what happened was profoundly unfair.
And sometimes I need to remember that a wave is not the whole ocean.
This anger may return. So may sorrow, disbelief, love, and longing. But they are no longer the only things that live inside me.
Hope lives here too.
So does purpose.
So does the part of me that has survived every wave so far.
The wreckage is real, and I will never pretend otherwise. But slowly, I am learning how to move through it. I am learning where to place my feet, when to rest, and when to reach for someone’s hand.
I may still become stuck sometimes.
But I am not buried.
And I am not alone.