What Surfing Taught Me About Grief

In his seminal surf memoir Barbarian Days, William Finnegan calls Will Rogers State Beach “not a proper surf spot.” Chris and I assess its conditions from the lip of the parking lot, blissfully oblivious to what, exactly, makes a surf spot “proper” or “improper.” It’s an overcast Monday morning, the wind is low, a typical five degrees cooler than my side of L.A. We are flanked by mountains to the north and the Santa Monica Pier, cloaked in fog, to the south. Modest, crumbly waves peel off the break. Monday mornings mean busy freeways and empty lineups. A smattering of surfers bob just beyond the whitewater, greedy for mediocre waves.

“Oh, yeah!” says Chris, earnest as ever. We’re two lifelong city kids and L.A. transplants who met in a writers’ group about five years back. “These conditions are perfect.” In fact, the forecasting service Surfline calls them, “poor to fair.”

I, a poor-to-fair surfer, agree with Chris. But the conditions don’t actually matter. I’m not really here to surf. On this particular morning, my Google Calendar is blanketed in one large, blue block: “GRIEVE.”

My brother, Zach, died from Leukemia when he was 31. Today is the four-year anniversary of his death. Zach’s Death Day — or, as my parents call it, Zach Day, apparently unable to stomach the middle word. In a surreal and unpleasant twist, I have grown older than my older brother, now 34.

Over the years since he died, I’ve found I am unable to predict my emotional status on Zach Day, or on his birthday, or holidays, or Ash Wednesday—he died on Ash Wednesday, so as Catholic luck would have it, I get a bonus anniversary to grieve each year. On such days, I will either a) lie in bed with the feeling of a ton of bricks on my chest; or b) carry about my day normally, carrying near-crippling guilt for the fact that I am not lying in bed with the feeling of a ton of bricks on my chest. For this particular Zach Day, I thought ahead. I’ve opted for neither. Instead of waiting to see whether I’m smothered by sadness or guilt, I will face my trauma head-on.

The plan is this: I will go surfing. I will stare out onto the water and think only of Zach, the unjustness of his early passing, the randomness of blood cancer, the cruel reality of watching a young man become an old man with horrifying speed. Yes. Today, I’ll find meaning in the ocean, as humanity has done for millennia. And when I return to my corporate copywriting job tomorrow, I will be healed—or at least have accomplished enough healing for Q1. How convenient that my company offers bereavement days in its benefits package.

As we embark on the pre-surf ritual—wrestling into wetsuits, waxing boards, warming up with rushed sun salutations aside buggy piles of cold seaweed—Chris asks why I took the day off work. I tell him, using “passed away” as my euphemism of choice.

“Mmm,” says Chris. He furrows his dark brow and lets the information hang in the air. Chris’ self-described brand of comedy is, “Not the funniest guy in the room, but the funniest guy who answers emails promptly.” Unlike many comics, he knows how to be a human being. “Mmm.” We both let the moment hang, not forcing it, before we move on to his two-month-old son’s new habit of defecating only when held in his mother’s arms.

The first task of surfing is paddling out to the lineup. This requires relying on my upper body to cut through a series of waves breaking in my direction. As a person who, as documented in this very publication, cannot do push-ups, this is hands-down my least favorite task of the sport. But staring misty-eyed at the water while considering mortality won’t hit from the beach like it will from the surf lineup.

I heave my belly onto the board and paddle. I form my palm into cups and extend each arm toward the horizon, one at a time. In front of me, I watch a wave enlarge, tighten, peak, then fold and become whitewater. When we collide, the wave is largely foam, slackened. I splash through it, horizon-bound. Paddle, paddle, paddle. I reach the impact zone, which is the area where the waves are breaking and crashing down—the goal being, not on me. Another wave mounts ahead. I feel a swoop in my stomach as I crest it, then slide down its backside, safe.

A third gathers. My shoulders burn as I surge head-first into the wave — I’m going to need to pick up more speed to make it through this one unscathed. There’s a smarter, less chaotic technique that real surfers use to avoid getting crashed on. I know this in theory. There’s a way through the wave, or under it, I’m told. The thumbnail of a YouTube video entitled “How To Turtle Roll” flashes into my mind, then crackles and fizzles. All that remains is the faint sound of the instructor’s Australian accent. The wave reaches its thunderous peak (two to three feet—“poor to fair”), the height of its force, then crests immediately to my left. I’m completely fucked.

“…AUR, NAUR…”

I have no choice. I bail off my board and plunge into the ocean. The wave hits the water just above me in a violent clap and rushes beach-bound. It yanks my 9’6” Rockin’ Fig with it, which yanks my ankle toward the shore, which in turn yanks the rest of my body toward the shore. The wave slackens and releases my board and I emerge for air, gasping.

I’ve come to define my life in terms of before and after Zach’s death—B.Z.D. and A.Z.D., respectively. I began surfing about one year A.Z.D. It was mid-pandemic and I had to do something. But even three years into the sport, the whole ritual still feels like cosplay. I grew up in Chicago, where surfing seemed like some absurd, make-believe event in the fantasy land of California. Saying things like “offshore winds” and “I dinged my board” makes me feel like the quirky sidekick in a Disney Channel Original Movie. And seeing dolphins? Forget about it. Not real life.

Zach certainly never surfed in his 31 years on Earth. Even if we’d grown up in California, he wouldn’t have surfed. For all his savantlike recitations of Premier League stats, Zach wasn’t exactly a jock himself. He was a maniacal Cubs fan, a dive bar evangelist, a Lollapalooza teen. I was all those things once, too. Indeed, it has always felt impossible to disentangle my brother’s identity from the city of Chicago itself. But I couldn’t stand living in my hometown forever and moved to LA. Who is Surfer Grace, and what did she do with Chicago Grace? He never knew this part of me, the poor-to-fair surfer part of me, and he never will. I got to grow up and older than him. I now have the privilege of being pummeled by the ocean.

After a humbling paddle-out, I eventually make it to the lineup, where Chris is waiting. He starts chasing waves like a Labrador would a Chuckit. But for me, the official mourning process begins. I look out onto the Pacific: Wow. So much water. Really makes you think. About, uh, where we go, or whatever.

But I’m distracted. A 13-year-old Drake verse blares through my head. I squint, and let a perfectly rideable wave pass. Then another. I think of intersections in Chicago—Fullerton and Ashland, North and Wood, then Clark and Wellington, where that sex toy shop used to be above Flub-a-Dub Chubs. Zach has been dead for four years. What’s changed since then? I wrote a book. I moved in with a girlfriend, then out. I got a dog. I got a sweater for my dog, a raincoat for my dog, and a Barbie-branded jean jacket for my dog. I got a car and drove it across the country, then went into lockdown. I count five COVID inoculations since Zach died. I count six outfits for my 25-pound dog since Zach died.

I should be sad out here, staring into the blue-gray sea, under the overcast skies. I specifically dedicated this time in my Google Calendar to being sad. More rideable waves pass. I should be thinking deep thoughts, contemplating the unjust brevity of my brother’s life. I am instead laughing to myself about the sex toy shop above Flub-a-Dub Chubs.

Unfortunately for my unfocused grieving process, straddling a surfboard in a 3/2 millimeter wetsuit in February gets cold, quick. I have to get out of my head and move, or I will die. No, I won’t die. But equally consequential: I will waste a rush-hour drive to the West Side. I have to at least try to catch a wave, if for no other reason than to skirt mild hypothermia. Enough of Flub-a-Dub Chubs. Enough.

I spy a mound of water building, drawing nearer to me. I wheel my feet counterclockwise like a mallard and whip around to face the beach, slap my belly to my surfboard, spine curled in Sphinx pose, and paddle. Paddle paddle paddle. My traps pinch as I stare toward the sand, fixated on the stray trash can to the right of the lifeguard tower. Paddle paddle paddle. I feel my body rise as the wave reaches me—

Paddle!!! Paddle!!! Paddle!!!

Then, boggy and mushy, it passes underneath me, continuing on toward the beach.

“SO close,” Chris says with the enthusiasm of an American Youth Soccer Organization coach. I’m unsure whether he realizes he’s lying. I prickle at the support, a little embarrassed, but grateful.

I chase another wave; I miss it. I try the next. And the one after that. I try every little blip of water that approaches my board, determined that this time I’ll get it. This is the wave. It’s just a numbers game, right? But my longboard simply isn’t hooking into the wave. You know when you catch a wave because you feel it. Your board glides; something just makes sense. I’m chasing that feeling, that clarity, that ease; I’m chasing it desperately. But wave after wave—and the thing about the ocean is, there will always be more waves—I’m flopping. To my right, an eight-year-old (who should be in school) rides a wave all the way to shore.

The problem is, I’m forcing it.

The challenge of surfing, it turns out, is not in riding the wave. It’s not about the pop-up. This was a slight relief to learn, as someone with the upper body strength of a late-in-life Ruth Bader Ginsberg—impressive for, you know, an 80-year-old cancer patient, which I am not.

Surfing is an art of observation. Most non-surfers imagine the hardest part is either the pop-up or constant and inescapable shark attacks. In fact, surfing is about timing. To succeed in this sport entails staring out into the ocean and reading the waves: to see a swell form and be able to gauge if it will be rideable, when it will be rideable, where one must be to ride it, the direction in which one must ride it, and whether, if I hustle to the right place at the right time, I’ll even have enough gas left to catch it. All of this, calculated in a matter of seconds. Or even in just a moment. And then you pop up.

To a novice, surfing appears to be a sport of fortune-telling. To the able, it is a sport of a hundred little calculations all done at once. To the seasoned, it is a sport of simply reading and reacting, not thinking at all. The waves go from something to be feared to something to be conquered to something to be worked with, to be integrated with, to accept as is. Today, I am somewhere between failed fortune-telling and over-calculating.

I watch Chris glide down the length of a wave, all the way to the beach. I throw a semi-ironic shaka sign in the air (Who is Surfer Grace?) to congratulate him from afar.

I start to let waves pass. I grow more discerning. The right wave will come, I just need to look for it. I’m not a strong enough surfer to chase waves and meet them at exactly the right moment, but maybe I will be one day. For now, I just observe. And when the right wave comes, it’s modest yet strong, accumulating speed and strength, but not too much. She’s right for me. I wheel around to face the shore, my longboard a bucking bronco, then paddle.

And then, be it by Poseidon’s grace or my own burgeoning surf prowess, I feel my board lock into the wave. I’m part of the wave. I can’t control its speed or size, only how I ride it. For about six whole seconds I glide—steady, fast, moderately in control—before unceremoniously losing my balance and tumbling into the sea.

I look back at the lineup. Chris is going fucking mental. If you’re ever feeling insecure, I recommend befriending a new dad. They tend to be lovestruck by life itself.

Today is the anniversary of Zach’s death, but it’s not a day I feel overwhelmed by grief, no matter what my Google Calendar says. Maybe tomorrow will be. Or maybe some random day in June will be. I won’t Conquer My Grief in today’s surf session. I’m not even sure grief is a thing to conquer. It’s a thing that moves, a thing I am just learning how to move with. I will have my whole life to learn how to contour myself to its moving shapes, when to push through, when to bail, when to use it to my advantage.

Instead of staring pensively out into the ocean in forced contemplation, I will try to catch waves. I search for the small miracle of my longboard hooking itself into an unbroken wave. And when I find it, I hold onto the feeling as long as I can.