After my husband Jeff died in 2019, I felt such raw and agonizing grief. I grieved for my kids who were 8 and 10 years old when their Dad died after a 2-year battle with esophageal cancer. I grieved for myself. And, I grieved for Jeff because he didn’t get the chance to live out the life he so desperately wanted, to grow old with me and watch our daughters at the different stages of their lives.

Now that I have had the experience of intimately knowing grief, I don’t believe it is something we can move through. There is no end destination to get to here. Grief does not end. But, it changes.

“It comes in waves,” is often how I’ve heard grief described. For me, there have been many days when it has felt like a tsunami after losing both my Husband and Dad to cancer. I have envisioned myself as a surfer, clinging to my board in these conditions, just trying to survive.

So when I connected with Dan Fischer, an avid surfer, who has taken that notion quite literally with his One Last Wave Project that connects grief, honouring our passed loved ones, and surfing, my interest was peaked.