Roller Coaster

The Screaming Eagle Roller Coaster at Six Flags St. Louis is 110 feet tall at its highest point, has a drop of 92 feet, and goes a zippy 62 miles per hour.  I am terrified of heights.  I get motion sick in cars if I don’t sit in the front seat.  And yet I have ridden this sucker twice, once in the mid-1990s when my mother was helping my husband and I chaperone a trip of his band students, and once last summer with my tween daughter and her friend.  Both times, I realized within ten seconds that I had made a dire, dire mistake.

The first time was all my mother's fault.  I’m pretty sure there was a conversation in which she said something like “It will be fun!” and I, in my carefree ignorance, agreed.   At the top of the first drop, she started screaming and continued to scream for the remainder of the two minutes and thirty seconds of hell that is the Screaming Eagle.  At the top of the first drop, I white-knuckled the grab bar, closed my eyes, and silently and desperately prayed that it would be over soon, and without loss of life, limb, or lunch.

The second time, twenty years later, my daughter and her friend wanted to ride but wanted me to come with them.  I thought, “Surely it can’t be as bad as I remember it being.”  Friends, this is the kind of misguided thinking that prompts women to go through childbirth a second, or third, or fourth time.  This time it wasn’t just as bad, it was worse, because I was not only certain that I was going to die, but also that my tiny, tiny twelve-year-old and her friend (whose mother would never forgive me) would surely be sucked out of their seats by the G-forces that were ripping my own hefty rear from the bench.  Despite the sickening views, I periodically pried open my clenched eyelids to make sure that the pair of them was still alive and relatively tethered down in the seat ahead of me.  It may have been the longest two minutes and thirty seconds of my life.  Somewhere in the cosmos, a little hourglass labeled “Jeannette’s Lifespan,” lost about three-years-worth of sand during that brief interval.

So I am not a fan of roller coasters.  And yet, in the past five years, I have found myself strapped into one with the rest of my small family—husband, daughter, and me—as we (against our will) negotiate the whips and curves on this track known as “early-onset dementia.” 

Just over five years ago, my husband began having problems with visual and spatial tasks.  He was also getting frustrated more easily and having difficulty managing his classes of elementary music and band students.  He decided to take early retirement.  His driving became somewhat erratic, resulting in some close calls on the road and in parking lots.  He started having difficulty remembering some things.  We visited doctors, he was subjected to a variety of tests and MRIs, and the conclusion was “dementia,” probably caused by Alzheimer’s.  At that point he began taking Aricept and later added Namenda to his daily regime.  His movements have gotten slower and slower, and he now shows a few of the jerks and tremors that can be associated with Parkinson’s disease.  He still knows who we are but his ability to read, process, and remember information are becoming increasingly compromised.  He needs help with dressing, getting into and out of the shower, and fixing food.  If I forget to help him tie his shoes properly, I spend the next day picking out the knots he has created in his attempt to tie them himself.

I spend every day on a roller coaster now.  Some moments are good.  Some are terrifying.  Some are heartbreaking.  I don’t know where the track will curve up ahead and where it will drop.  I don’t know how long the ride will last.  I do know where the ride will end.  It is not a place that any of us want to go to, and we are trapped, trapped, trapped on this thing.  I am frightened and sad and angry for all of us.  Getting on the ride was not a choice that any of us made.  Every day there is grief and guilt and frustration and anxiety.

  

But, right now, there is still quite a bit of ordinariness each day as well.  We can still smile and laugh.  We can still take pleasure in small, important things, like listening to favorite songs, and petting the cats, and taking walks around the neighborhood, and eating chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven.  There are people who love us and who are ready to help when they are needed.  We are not alone.

And so, we cling to each other, and we hang on tight.