When I was young I had a nasty experience with seaweed. It had become tangled round my legs and led to a significant amount of panic. Needless to say it has left me with a degree of irrational fear about the stuff.
A couple years back I was body surfing at Mount Maunganui with the kids. As I was ploughing down a particularly nice wave I felt something tug at my knees and then get tangled around my ankles. I knew it must be seaweed. I also had an overwhelming need to get it off as quickly as possible.
About the time I realised what was going on, I lost concentration and nose-dived head first into the wave only to be pole driven in to the seabed and then turned over and over while struggling to breathe and release my feet from the seaweed.
When I finally washed up on the shore, I started to stand up only to discover that the nasty, life threatening seaweed turned out to be my togs!
It would be fair to say that this one embarrassing experience has cured my fear of seaweed.
I love waves. I like the noise they make – especially at night. But I also like the way they are slightly unpredictable. Anyone wanting to ride them has to learn to read them well.
Recently I had the sad experience of observing and participating with one of the families who lost a child in the Mangatepopo tragedy. There are few words to describe what they have all been through and as with most experiences like this, the hardest times are always in the in the months that follow.
Having experienced the loss of a family member personally and also having sat with many others going through the same thing, I have come to realise that living with grief feels much like body surfing.
In the initial storm we are crushed by wave of upon wave of violent torrents of grief that come in quick succession. They are times when we need people to hold us up, hang on to us and keep us going.
Eventually the storm subsides, the waves quieten a little and there are gaps between them. Sometimes they are simple swells that we can manage on our own, but every now and then a big one catches us unexpectedly and sometimes inconveniently.
There are days when our hearts are very calm and we feel we should be in more of a storm – sometimes we long for it because it doesn’t feel right that we are ok. The waves soon return though.
I’m not sure we ever get over significant loss. The waves are always there, we just lean the art rolling with them initially, and then the art of riding them.
Riding grief waves means that the tragedy of past loss is always there, but it’s power of over us transformed. No longer does it crush us, but rather adds to the life we have, making it fuller and more valuable than before.
Digby Wilkinson © 2008