Grief reaction

When I first started working at a hospital 40+ years ago, in our orientation lecture we were told that people react to illness in many ways...
Some Joked.
Some flattered you, thinking that if you liked them you could "save" them.
Some would actually bribe you.
Some would ignore you (I first worked as a nurse's aid, and the patients might ignore you as unhelpful to save them).
And some....would be terribly angry that they were sick, and they were out of control, and would be angry at you...
We were told that in ALL these cases, that we ourselves were not being addressed but it was a way to cope with illness...

Later, as doctors, we recognized that we also could be the objects of anger at illnesses, even when things go well, but especially when things go wrong...which they do at times.

Similarly, as an adoptive mom of older children, we were warned that our children might show terrible anger at us, but the anger would often be a projection of anger against their first (abusive) parents for dying or abandoning them...

This is a way of coping with something that is terrible: You blame someone else, and you then can cope with the terrible anguish inside...

What is bad, nowever, is when outsiders, who know little about it, take advantage of the anger...or naively misunderstand that projected anger is a way of coping with loss, and not especially a mirror of reality...