Death, Stage Fright, and Roller Coasters.

I want you to get into the deep beautiful melancholy of everything that's happened.

-Claire Colburn, Elizabethtown

The funny thing about death is the way is surprises you; even when you're prepared for it. Even when you're half expecting it. When it finally happens, it's still feels as if the world has come screeching to a halt for a moment, and something in you clamors that this is not the way things are supposed to be, and, of course, that is the best assessment, because death is not the way things are supposed to be. The little voice that clamors and shouts is from pre-Eden times, when all was right with the world.

Slowly you realize death encompasses more than just the loss of that person. It is the closing of a chapter, the swift turning of a page, the ending of a season. It is the equivalent of being pushed on stage, while the stage director anxiously whispers, "You're up," and finding yourself in the glaring brilliance of the spotlight, without a single word to say.

Or, it is like that moment before the moment the roller coaster plunges down the tracks, and you have a sudden revelation that you actually hate roller coasters and have decided that you need to get off. Now. Right now. You are bewildered by the anticipation in the air. The nut in the front car with his hands already waving wildly above his head... You're not ready! You don't want to do this! Oh, it's going to be awful and, you are grasping at the handle bars, grasping at your stomach- preparing yourself for complete and utter destruction... and then you are falling. Falling with terrifying speed. Plummeting, you believe, into an abyss with no bottom like Alice in Wonderland.


Then, suddenly, you find there is a bottom after all. Not only a bottom, but an upswing. Perhaps even a loop. The pit in your stomach softens, and the feeling of sheer terror you felt just a moment before evaporates. You made it! It was not as bad as you'd anticipated. You made it through the freefall, and you were quite alright.

Perhaps that is what it's like to mourn the loss of someone.

You grieve. Maybe you cry for a long time. Maybe you feel sad for a long time. But, one day, instead of feelings of sadness, you feel only a tiny pinch of something bittersweet. And, when you bake her famous biscuit recipe, or pull out the Christmas stocking she made you, or glimpse her laugh lines in your father's smile, you bottle those moments up and you thank God you had as many years with her as you did. And, you move forward.