Oct 29, 2022

The Dead Man Float

I wrote this for a friend tonight about grief...

The Dead Man Float

10/29/22

By Andrea Tadpole-Broussard

This sounds horrible but this is how think. I have never managed to surf the waves very good. I kept getting body slammed! So, years ago when my granddaughter died and I was having a horrible time, I kept trying to invision riding the waves and having no luck. My mind went back to 8th grade when I learned survival swimming. We had to master this float called the dead man float. It would supposedly keep you alive and conserve energy if you were stranded far away from land in deep water or waves. We had a contest and I won because I could do the dead man float better than anyone in 8th grade. So here I was in the stormy seas of grief over my granddaughter dying and I saw myself calm down and do the dead man float. Somehow it made me relax. The tears still fell, the heartache was still there but if I stopped fighting it and just floated I could get through it. The dead man float has my ass many a day, especially this past year.

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