THE DEATH OF AN ACQUAINTANCE

I have many times reflected on what exactly it is that makes us grieve so when we lose a loved one, a family member, close friend, etc… What exactly is it that is making us feel so sadly…so lost, so deep in mourning. When our elderly father or mother passes away we feel tremendous grief….but a very different grief from losing a father when we are very young.……that can be breathtaking, and debilitating….

I lost a casual friend last week…she was slightly more than an acquaintance…but she was someone who I always looked out for when I was in the ocean….I was always happy to see her….but I never really had any substantive relationship with her……yet, I am in mourning….. a more ambiguous mourning than I would have with a close friend or family member.....those losses are devastating…I have been spared their gravity up until now…my father and mother are elderly but still alive…and thankfully I have never lost someone very close who wasn’t elderly.

But, if I may take an introspective, but perhaps uncomfortable walk….the mourning I feel for my casual friend, Desiree’, seems much more selfless..than the mourning over the loss of someone with whom I had a great deal of memories…someone much closer…perhaps it is presumptuous of me to even pretend to understand that kind of loss...given my inexperience.

These are just my thoughts….open to scrutiny…but when I mourn the death of my friend…a young girl in her 30’s…who was doing what she loved to do best….surfing…I don’t mourn any measurable personal loss….this isn’t my lover, or my child, or someone who I traveled across Europe with on a shoestring budget…she doesn’t conjure up any substantive memories…I don’t feel like a person who cared deeply for me, and who I cared for deeply…. is now gone….I don’t feel that there is now a vacuum in my life...a ”hole” where this person once resided.

I do feel the weight of having connected to her life, to have intersected with her..mostly at a distance…and deep sadness for the life she has lost…it is over!…it should have had many more “Acts”…she had so much more to live...so many more waves to ride. I am sad for what she missed …and I am very down about how her parents must feel…losing a daughter..in such a freakish way……I put myself in their shoes…and feel empathy for what they are going through….knowing completely what it is like to love a child.

My grief isn’t for me….it will be some day…when my parents pass…I will remember the Dodgers games with my father…and all of the times my mother was there for me…but when confronted with that inevitable reality..I will bend..…and perhaps break for a moment or two…knowing that that person who had touched my life so deeply ..who had held me and cared for me when I was totally dependent and helpless…and who loved me so completely…and whom I loved…is now gone from this world…that beautiful book will have no more pages.

Desiree is different…I went to the Fire Station at County Line tonight to try and speak with someone who knew about the fresh event that had occurred just a few hundred yards away….I showed the fireman a recently laminated memorial paper..it had Desiree’s smiling face on it…and a photo of her sitting cross legged on her red longboard, in the manner I remembered….he instantly recalled the whole thing…he said, ”yes, Desiree’”. He recounted the details and how she was airlifted…and how there was no way to have helped her…she was beyond assistance from the outset..though they had tried to render life support. She had a couple of friends there in the water who were surfing with her on that terminal early evening…what a tragedy…occurring in a place where so much life, and joy, and beauty abounds.

I couldn’t sleep the night I found out about it….or hardly…..I went to her tumbler account and looked at dozens and dozens of photos of her…in goofier times…with her surfboard…her family....wearing Halloween costumes……I saw a few whimsical videos she had made. I almost cried but didn’t. In my mind I was trying to give her a memorial ….evidence that she wasn’t forgotten…(not yet)…a sign of endearment, to a person who I enjoyed seeing in the water..and talking with.

I sometimes wonder if when a person loses someone really close…if they aren’t grieving as much or more for what they themselves have lost….the personal loss…as of a lost talisman…or the loss of someone whose company you depended on…or whose past is intertwined into your own…a loss of someone to chronicle your legacy….the loss of immortality….at those times the sentimentality can be volcanic. But Desiree’…I experience no truly personal loss with her passing….I stand shocked at the abruptness and capriciousness of the Gods….the once joyous sunset…was tragic on that day…the sun set less than an hour after she was pulled out of the ocean….she could have never imagined that when she awoke that morning that she would never again see another sunset.

As the helicopter pulled away with Desiree’s lifeless body…it would be only a few minutes before the sound of the propellers would fade away…and the sounds of the crashing of waves would take over……like they always do, like they have for thousands of years……..the ocean has no favorites...it doesn’t care....it just pulses….though heartlessly….it will caress you…and in an instant it will create your worst nightmare…. a cold blooded killer.

The fireman took my memorial sign and asked me to take a seat in the station as he went looking for a stake and and a staple gun…he came back a few minutes later with Desiree’s laminated memorial stapled to a long and worthy stake. It was getting dark and we both knew that I had to get to the beach if I was going to get her memorial built tonight…I told him a few things that I knew about her….where she was from, how “free spirited” she was…etc..and he told me some of the tragic details that spelled the end of my friends life…We did it for Desiree…we were taking time out for Desiree….both of us….

I have never built a Memorial before…I had never planned on doing it…never foreseen the day,…and certainly not at one of our planets greatest playgrounds…on the side of the hard and gray PCH maybe,….but not here!

I drove the stake into the harder beach sand, away from the reaches of high tide.…the wind was blowing hard so I had to stabilize the sign with some duct tape..sorry Desiree’. I gathered big rocks…and placed them around the stake…as many larger ones as I could find….I imagined her out in the water ….on her red board…it was peaceful. I duct taped the purple flowers I had bought to the stake….placed some surf wax at the base of the rocks…an offering to the gods of surf..…and I left a bag of skittles…I don’t like Skittles…but when I was picking out candy at the market for this occasion..…I pretended that she did…the way someone would place a coca cola can on my memorial…or a nice moist brownie, the ones my grandma made especially for me….

I did it to celebrate the memory of my acquaintance….her loss…not mine

It was completely dark by the time I had placed my last rock……like it had gone moments after Desiree’s last, lifeless, helicopter ride into the distance and over the mountains….leaving only whispers.

“Ample make this bed

make this bed with awe;

in it, wait till judgement break

excellent and fair

be it’s mattress straight,

be it’s pillow round;

let no sunrise’ yellow noise

interrupt this ground”.

-Emily Dickinson