Extraordinary Sunshine Weaver

Grief and Joy Ride the Smiler

The wacky 14-loop roller coaster ride invites laughter and loss. Grief screams and hangs on to Joy as though proposing. The reeling, a dance of ups, downs, ins and outs. Twists and turns. Joy loses her lunch on Loop 8, Grief, his last two beers. The white-knuckled grips. The acrid shouts and loose-stooled laughter. The dizzy trance of sky below and sea above. The sudden shudder of fear and love tangled behind one guard rail. One life passing out.      

Barbara Leonhard, 2024

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The Smiler is the world’s only 14-loop roller coaster. You can ride it in Alton Towers, an amusement park in Stoke-on-Trent in central England. Take a look.

GRIEF

Do you ever feel like you’re riding The Smiler? We humans are never off this ride. Aren’t our days filled with highs and lows? Ups and downs? Twists and turns? I certainly feel dizzy after most days even though I consider myself even keeled. 

Yesterday (January 16, 2024) we tragically lost a family member to melanoma. The last time I saw her was at a family birthday celebration for her son on January 5, just 11 days before she passed. I told her she looked great because she glowed. I had the impression that her cancer treatments were working. Her brain was not affected, and the cancer wasn’t spreading.

She had challenges. She desperately needed a hip replacement, but that surgery was postponed due to the chemo treatments. Because the painkillers for the hip pain made her sleepy, she sometimes missed taking medication to prevent adrenal failure. These lapses caused some hospitalizations. A couple of days ago, I heard she was in the hospital again and assumed it was another case of adrenal failure. Although she was lucid upon admission, her condition declined quickly. She was put on life support and was brain-dead. Despite measures to save her, she passed away.

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When someone passes, we relive other losses of kin and friends. And we understand others’ grief from the loss of their loved ones. Grief is a shared malady. With death, a spark of joy is snuffed out, and we are left to guard a smoldering fire. Our happy memories. Our deep loss. Being human entails holding both grief and joy in one hand. And each other with the other hand.

A good friend and fellow poet, Nolcha Fox, who recently lost her mother to cancer, wrote a beautiful sonnet for me, “She Died Last Night”, which has been published on Medium.

View at Medium.com

JOY

Grief and joy. Today in between crying sessions, I received gifts. A fellow editor, Michelle Ayon Navajas, emailed me a logo she had created for MasticadoresUSA, an online literary magazine for which I am the Editor. 

Also, on Facebook today, this post popped up, an unexpected surprise. Thank you, Trending Poets!!

Life is full of surprises. One minute we are high with joy; the next, in tears. We can’t predict or manage outcomes. We can, however, nurture equanimity and grace with fierce self-compassion and unconditional love for others, who are on the same crazy Smiler we call life.

Also, Scuzzbucket published a version of this post on Medium.

View at Medium.com