Roller Coaster?

Don't get me wrong.  I LOVE a good metaphor.  I have a great one about how alchol to a drunk is spot-on like a  handsome yet awful and abusive ex-boyfriend that you just can't forget.  But grief-is-like-a-roller coast?  I think the mental health professional who coined that one went to the Dr. Nick school of psychology.  It's just lazy and completely inadequate.  Ups and downs? Yeah, got it.  You must have worked hours on that one.

So loss, especially sudden loss, is NOT like a roller coaster.  For starters, and most importantly, ummm, ROLLER COASTERS ARE FUN.  One boards a roller coaster willingly, except in those cases where your kid is making you get on some vomit-inducing thing where you'd rather be scrubbing toilets I guess.  But you still go by choice.  In fact, you'll pay mightily for the privilege, just ask those kind folks at Disney.  Next, you KNOW you are getting on the roller coaster.  You're not just going about your business and BAM you're suddenly at the top of a huge hill, plummeting downwards at 60 m.p.h. with no idea how you got there.  Roller coasters have an end, usually in about two minutes.  Most people can endure just about anything for two minutes.  Afterwards, one might say, "that was freakin' awesome!"  "Let's go again" or maybe, "that was horrible, so glad it's over, at least I can say I did it..."  No one who has been through the grief horror wringer is going to make any of those statements.

Maybe there isn't a good metaphor and that's the point.  There's simply no way to describe it properly.  I was thinking about all this during this week after Ryan Dunn (of Jackass fame) crashed his car and died.  His friend Bam was on TV saying he somehow knew, that he had some kind of premonition and started freaking out and trashing his car around the same time of the accident, thousands of miles away.  The day of my mom's accident, we had no such feeling and I thought that somehow we should have "felt" it.  We were in fact having a LOVELY, perfect day on vacation in Utah.  

We'd gone out for donuts at Banbury Cross (do yourself a favor if ever in Salt Lake and have the cinnamon - mom's favorite).  Then we took the kids to an amazing bowling alley that we had to ourselves (who bowls at 9:00 in the morning?)  We had a fantastic lunch and then went to Hatch Family Chocolates for ice cream.  Anyone seen the Little Chocolatiers?  It used to be on TLC, I think.  I had a nice chat with Steve, the husband, about the show.  They make a great vanilla bean ice cream served in dish with espresso and the kids were writing the word "geezer" in the steam from their breath on the window to the elderly (geezer) who cut in line in front of us.  Finally, we drove back to Kelsey's and didn't hit a red light the whole way.  This alone is miraculous - that ride can take 15 minutes and it took 5.  I commented on it to David because it was freakishly great.  I looked up driving directions while David packed our car with the ski gear for the drive to Eden for the long weekend at Snowbasin.  I was thinking they were pretty complicated and mom was going to need the map when she landed the next morning to join us.  I had loaded the snacks.  I was working on the refrigerator - eggs, I believe, when David's cell phone rang and our world fell apart.  The refrigerator stayed open for the next hour.  

It's weird, I can feel my adrenaline rising again just writing that.  That might be the only connection to roller coasters.  Because if this was anything like a roller coaster, I would say, "sorry, I'm not ready for this ride, I'm going to pass."