Page 123 - THE ENDLESS WAVE | Skateboarding, Death & Spirituality

THE ENDLESS WAVE | PART TWO
As you’re up there, you might have checked your surroundings, asked yourself more questions, maybe picked up your board and taken it off the coping to pull yourself together, and psych yourself up.
In the days of learning to skate a halfpipe, maybe you had to have these psyche up moments to motivate you and give you the push you needed to get up there, even just to put the tail of your board onto the coping. The first few days may have passed since losing someone. You might begin to recognize that the one you loved is not around.
4. Taking the plunge — The front foot goes onto the front deck bolts of your skateboard. You’re about to take the plunge down. It’s a foreign feeling to go through the motions of standing up, putting weight on the back leg, com- pressing the body and bending the front knee and taking that plunge in. Some of us change our minds, jump off at the last second and end up running down the transition or sliding down the ramp.
Some of us fall on our first-ever drop-in attempts, maybe leaning too far back or forward and some of us ride it out to the bottom. If you do fall off your skateboard, do you get back up again and try again? If you hurt yourself, that’s okay, take the time to recover and try again when you are ready. If you are ob- serving someone try this for the first time, what do you do? Do you encourage them? See if they are alright?
Similarly in the early stages of acknowledging your grief and loss, you may have days when you feel the weight of your emotions coming down, like you miss your dearly departed loved ones. Go with the flow of your emotions. It’s okay to cry if you need to, just like how it’s okay to take your tail off the coping if you need a moment to pull yourself together. Check-in with your friends who you see needing that extra support.
5. The next transition — If you stay on your skateboard after dropping in, you’ll soon be riding through the flat and approaching the next transition. What do you do to get to the top of the next transition? Do you stay as you are with your knees bent and ride up and back down fakie? Do you kick
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