The Roller Coaster of Life

The Roller Coaster of life

Everything has an expiration date.

The milk in your fridge, the socks on your feet, and the life that you live.

If we can accept that our socks can wear out, should we also accept that our lives can too?

Poor analogy obviously, as the reasoning has holes in it. Darn.

The roller coaster of life.....and death

Life has a way of dragging us on journeys of peaks and valleys.

As we take the last peak and survey our life’s last descent, we realize that only good memories remain, all of the negative ones, anger, resentment, jealousy ...and even regret get left behind.

Only the positive ones such as happiness, laughter, friendships, and love remain.

Maybe our souls know that hanging on to bitterness and other cynical thoughts as we head into eternity would be unacceptable. Our souls want optimistic reflections to surround us in the afterlife.

As the very top of the peak we still are hopeful that after this drop we will rise again, hopeful for another peak, and more peaks beyond that one. We cling to that hope like the packaging around toys. We need that hope. We need to continue to find more incontrovertible pieces of goodness for our journey. Like a black hole we absorb and hold dear everything that makes us smile. At the end of many peaks and valleys, near the end of a long ride, every kind act, every loving embrace, is fully appreciated.

The view at the top is spectacular, all of life’s special moments on display. The most memorable are a combination of exciting and embarrassing ones. Somehow the ones that mortified you before have become the funniest of memories, funny how time can help heal mental wounds.

The final descent has begun; somehow, it is the tallest and steepest of the many drops. The momentum builds until the wind is fierce and my hair is flying.

I can see the ground ahead approaching. I also see that the tracks don’t extend to the usual disembarking platform. No more tracks at all.

After a few more seconds of free-fall I can see something up ahead. A tunnel. The drop continues into a dark tunnel heading straight down into the ground.

Zoom, before I can register this, I am already in it. Plunged into the darkness. Plunged into the unknown.

The first sense that registers anything but darkness has picked up a scent of muskiness, of many layers of dead and decaying material. Knowing somehow that all living things end up on this last ride. Our parts slowly being absorbed back into the earth. A scary notion but I am not scared.

Then the ride changes again, two things happen at the same time. Light appears; while not very bright it hides everything else so that all I can see is the light and the one seat car that is delivering me to destiny. The second change is that from out of nowhere I am suddenly holding a small box. A shoebox.

Curious, I open it slowly from a corner, not sure what I will find in there. As I slowly pull the lid off, it dawns on me that it is a memory box. One where all my best memories are stored, all recreated in vivid 3-D bubbles. There are hundreds in there, and I slowly sift my hand through them, bringing ones further down up to be relived. Smiling as I am mesmerized by the little bubbles, another change soon begins.

Almost like making popcorn, but this time as they pop, they slowly turn into mist and are swept away from the still hurtling car until just over a dozen are left.

The ones left suddenly begin expanding and changing shape. They take the shape of small stuffed pandas, like the kind you can win at a game at the fair. The shoebox also disappears.

I scramble to hold onto all of the memory pandas and manage to get most of them but do notice that a couple were swept away by the wind as the freefall continues. One of them I recognize as the day I couldn’t stop laughing. Hours on end of riotous laughter that just wouldn’t end. Somehow in the madness of the ride I manage to smile at the memory.

Cradling with both arms and legs, and even clamping down on a panda ear with my teeth, they feel secure for the moment. Of course the moment doesn’t last.

One last metamorphosis occurs, the pandas all grow to the size of the grand prize ones found at a fair, each large enough to be awkward carrying just one around the fairgrounds. As they grow the panda faces all change until they become the most important people in my life.

They grow much too large to hold onto so many and they start to exfoliate, like the layers of life they are. Friends, amazing friends all, are slowly being ripped away by the wind. I say a quick goodbye to each one, and try to grasp the remaining pandas even tighter.

In no time at all I am down to five. My parents, my two kids, and the one I am clutching the tightest. My panda.

Then a billboard inside my head appears, and the message it has makes me cry, even though I had somehow expected it. The message is simple: ONLY ONE.

When that message blinks off, I become aware that ahead of me the tunnel I had been in has opened up and there is a wall of light approaching. It is a wall of bright springtime blue. It is as far as the eye can see. Up, down, side to side. It is approaching quickly.

I have only seconds before I am at this wall of light. I have to let go. I blow a kiss to each parent and they float away when I release them. I then bring my kids in close and kiss their panda embodied faces. Whispering hoarsely that I love them. Unable to let go. I never want to let go. Feeling like a lifetime but only seconds in real time, I realize that they need to cross over eventually with just one themselves, and that they have a lifetime to make that choice. Feeling only slightly better, I let go of them both at the same time and watch them drift back in the wind.

Down to one.

The light is only moments away. I still haven’t seen who this giant panda is. I just KNOW that it is my panda. I look up to see the face and am stunned to see it is just a regular panda face. Frantically I look back to see if I can still reach one of my kids, but they are too far, the wall too close.

As the light around me intensifies, it also shines clarity into me. My panda, the one I want to bring into eternity with me, is someone I haven’t met. Someone I don’t know. Someone still out there waiting for me…. but it is too late.

I am in the light.