Angry Old Man/Sad Old Man?

I had a friend who died 4 or 5 years ago. Maybe he was 92 or 93. We were students together in a training program, he the oldest in our cohort, I the youngest. They called him Eph ... short for Ephraim, too biblical a name for the Twentieth Century. Years (decades, indeed) after we trained, we would meet for lunch ... he and I or M, he and I .... into his 90's. He, this very kind man who ran non-profits for 60 years, would inevitably get pissed off at the wait-staff. A scene I remembered recently in another posting to this Blog was when he ordered sandwich and 'a coffee' at a deli. The young man brought both out, getting the response: are you stupid? wyen someone order a sandwich and a coffee, he expects the coffee to come after he finishes the sandwich, otherwise the coffee will be cold. I gave the young man an extra large tip ... thinking to myself that he had just been aggressed upon by this Old Friend of mine and deserved combat pay .................... On a listserv discussion group that I'm active with some folk are discussing whether sadness covers our anger or whether anger is used to protect ourselves from the experience of sadness. Another older person, a retired professional, visited me recently. He's had to give up his sport, his walking is unsteady, continenxe and much else is questionable and unsteady in his 80's. And still another younger person, still under 70, visited recently. A kindly person, indeed, a good grandma and earlier a good mama ... all three of these people (roughly 70, 80 and 90) could be described as kindly people who have committed their lives to shepherding the world's wounded in their professions. ............ In thinking of them, the conversations that arose to my mind were all about having done something 'angry' and, still, all three I would describe as kindly Souls, suffering from the inescapable sadness of aging and its losses. Sadness is, as I've argued in these postings before, so primary a feeling when we experience the variety of losses that accompany the unfolding fractal that is life. It brings with it a similarly primal sense of vulnerability ... like when we can't find Mom or Dad's umbrella at the beach. If it gets too painful, we may start barking at others ... barking makes us feel stronger, less vulnerable. Sadness leaves us enriched.