Page 8 - THE ENDLESS WAVE | Skateboarding, Death & Spirituality

THE ENDLESS WAVE | PART ONE
The SkateGeezer Homepage led to a book contract and in 1999, The Concrete Wave (the history of skateboarding) was published. It sold 42,000 copies and launched a 52-part TV series. After this, I launched International Longboarder Magazine in the summer of 1999. This magazine eventually became Concrete Wave and I published and edited it until the summer of 2018. Here’s a collec- tion of issues: issuu.com/concretewaves
When I decided to sell the magazine, it was because I felt that it was time to do something else. Initially, I thought I’d move into working at a non-profit. It turned out that my life was going to go in a different direction. I wound up answering a job advertisement at a local funeral home. I had done some vol- unteer work at a nearby hospice and retirement home. After my interview, they asked me to come in for a day to try things. This was late June of 2018, and something about the job felt right.
So, for the last five years or so, I’ve been working as a funeral director’s assis- tant. It was quite a transition from publishing. I pretty much do everything but arrange funerals. From premature babies to those over 100 years old, I’ve experienced death up close and personal. I’ve done dozens of house calls to transfer the deceased back to our funeral home and assisted at well over 700 funerals.
It’s been over three years since I wrote about skateboarding and over 25 years since I connected with Dansworld to write my first piece. It feels wonderful to be writing again.
I want to thank my family, My wife Michal, daughter Maya and sons Jonathan and Ethan. They have been incredibly supportive of everything I’ve done. They’ve also been monumentally patient and understanding too. Without them, I’d be nowhere. I’d also like to thank Nathan Ho for inspiring me and being a catalyst for me to start writing again.
I hope that this book inspires my fellow skateboarders to think about death and dying from a different perspective — a perspective that is uniquely ours. Thank you for taking the time to read it.
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