[coldtea]

>In fact, the actual grief process looks a lot less like a neat set of stages and a lot more like a roller coaster of emotions.

Roller-coasters still have a specific route and different stages. I'd say in the same way there can be a prevailing sentiment at each stage of grief, even if this or that sentiment comes and goes at times at all stages.

[SPBesui]

Metaphors are of course imperfect by their very nature, but more importantly, the phrase “a roller coaster of emotions” isn’t even really a metaphor. It’s a figure of speech that means one is going through a wide range of feelings and/or emotions in a (relatively) short amount of time, possibly in rapid succession or even simultaneously. I think it was used appropriately.

[oxfordmale]

It is more a disjointed roller coaster. Some stages of grief can be skipped all together or aren't experienced in a linear order.

[coldtea]

I think this sibling comment covers my point well:

"Did you ever expect that there were discrete and linear stages? I always assumed that these were emotional “attractors”, different emotional states that we migrated through without any particular vector. More like a cruise through a dismal archipelago."