Roller Coaster

Yesterday I went to a funeral.  The funeral was for a friend’s husband who passed away unexpectedly. Too soon.  He was only 48.  His youngest child is 12 (like Audrey).  The last speaker was his very close friend and he was very honest.  At one point he broke down a little and said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow.  S@*^%!  I just don’t know how to do this.”  

I have a friend who has tried for many many years to have a baby.  She has lost so many.  My heart has broken for her multiple times as she has announced her pregnancies and then later had to announce her bereavement.  After all of these years, she finally gave birth to a healthy, beautiful baby boy, on the same day my friend’s husband passed.  

Today is Kate’s birthday.  In so many ways she is the light of my life.  (As are my other kids too.)  She is my rainbow baby, my sunshine after the rain.  She is full of empathy, spunk and determination.  My children’s birthdays are days of joyful reflection and gratitude for me.

In the very early hours of this same morning a woman, who is a friend, succumbed to cancer and passed away leaving her three underaged children and her husband brokenhearted.  

And so life is.  My heart has been dragged back and forth, back and forth.  

I browsed Facebook, my heart leaping, seeing the pictures of my friend’s new baby.  The joy.  Oh my goodness!  The JOY on their faces.  Pure contentment.  Then to be wrenched around to posts from my other friend and the horror of a “bed too big” and her hand empty without his to hold.  Her search for his shoulder to cry on.  Now, to wake up today, feeling giddy with excitement to share the surprises planned for my sweet Kate on her birthday, only to read the news that my friend was gone and her family left in the wake.  

Back and forth.  Up and down.  While one is having dreams come true another is having theirs shattered.

The memory of the scene from the movie Parenthood (with Steve Martin) came to my mind.  

The family is in complete tumult with so many hard circumstances.  The husband and wife are arguing when the grandmother (who is suffering from dementia) walks into the room and innocently says:

You know, when I was 19 Grandpa took me on a roller coaster. Up and down, up, down. Oh, what a ride. I always wanted to go again. It was just interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened...so scared, so sick, so excited...and so thrilled all together. Some didn't like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.

I have looked into the faces of strangers and wondered where they were at that moment.  

Up?  

Down?

Turning?

Spinning?

Anticipating a drop?       

Excited?

Sick?

Wanting to go again?

Wanting to get off?

It has seemed so odd to me to be passing by a person feeling total euphoria and not feel it emanating from them, to not share in their joy, and in turn to walk by a person in utter despair and agony and not share in their burden.  

All these strangers interacting, bumping off of each other like bumper cars without being able to take hold of each other.  To share each others lives.  

What a curious existence this mortality is.   

I have no lesson.  No “Aha!” for this post.  Just these thoughts and a rather raw heart.