GET OFF THE WALL

Like my Granny, I believe that death happens in threes as it has worked like that with my life experiences as well. Her notion of “a stranger, someone you have known briefly, and someone close to you” was the pattern and thus far death around me has solidified this belief. I believe that on September 25th, 2023 the light here on earth got a tad bit dimmer and I unknowingly lost someone who was close to me. I found out on November 24th that he was indeed gone and I have since just been trying to process and think through how I can and want to reflect on this incredible person who gave me so much I have to be thankful for today. Over Thanksgiving a colleague unexpectedly passed away and seeing so much grief from those much closer to him than I was, made me so empathetic to their struggles and sadness and reflective of how in loss we do end up with so much gratitude as well. It is a muddy tide that seems to ebb and flow and that we try to dam up, prevent, hide and hold until a crack comes breaking through and the water swirls and rushes around our present, to where it is undeniable that the landscape is forever changed, and its erosion and impact cannot be undone. That the person was here, that the sadness is real, that the loss is great, and that we are also, like the landscape molded, changed, and left to reflect as the sun still rises, the earth still spins and there is now a world without this person in it, which seems so strange and cruel yet cleansing and natural.

I met John Contoupe in 1996, he was my high school swim coach and Leadership teacher at my high school in south Florida. He was bold, he was funny, he was adventurous, and he was Greek. He was unapologetically himself and encouraged others to be that as well. He was a listener, advisor, coach, advocate, teacher but most importantly a friend. Not a day of my high school life wasn’t either spent in a pool, a conversation, or a classroom with his man and more often than not all three within the same day. I literally had my first experience traveling the world with him before even graduating high school. The memories of sleeping on buses, trains, airplanes and wads of wet towels, trying “weird” new foods that now seem ordinary, stretching while debating on thousands of topics on pool decks, shaving heads and bodies of teammates (and him, Ha!) after a night of carb loading, shoving him off starting blocks fully dressed from school, him being a guest on my high school radio show and the ice cream we ate afterwards pontificating on the meaning of life and our purpose within it. He spent two solid days in a (very large and very freezing) kiddy pool at my request inside my physics class to help me student teach “The Physics of Swimming” (swim trunks, hairy Greek back and all). He was right there when the news broke to me that one of my closest friends, whom I had just seen hours before and was the last to hug and hold, was in a horrific car accident and wouldn’t likely make it. He held me sobbing, left every responsibility he had a that moment and drove me right then and there two hours away to be with her before she died. He taught me how to grieve, how to lose, how to reflect, how to screw up, how to apologize, how to own my shit, how to ask for help and to adjust and grow; in meets, in school, in death, but most importantly in life. This was the man I know and knew. He supported me, cheered me on whether I was above or below the water, I can close my eyes and still hear his voice shout at me as I come up for air. PULL, STRETCH, REACH, GO! In practice his booming deep thick Greek accent yelling to “GET OFF THE WALL” even if you had just touched to go, as that was too much time in idle. Your toes bleeding through calluses from how hard you pushed off time and time again, lap after lap, and the drive he still expected and knew you had in you, even when you didn’t. This was Contoupe, and this was what it was like to be in the orbit of his love. You were accepted, pushed, challenged, provoked, nurtured, and encouraged.

These memories, and countless others, have always been cherished by me, but in hindsight I see them in technicolor. Like slides through a Viewmaster, they are snapshots of a story. Individually they bring moments of joy, recall, laughter I can hear still, and some of my most formative saddest times in my youth. Collectively they comprise entire books within the encyclopedia of my life thus far, and he was co-author, a main character, and antagonist for so many of them.

As I went off to college, to see the world, to adult, he always kept in touch, first via email, then texts and then social media. He always reached out anytime a picture of one of my kids was anywhere near water. It was like he knew that I grew up, literally and figuratively in it myself, and seeing my own children in a pool or the beach was probably his version of watching the circle of life. ?He encouraged my creativity and problem solving. He let me make decisions and try things, that he probably at the time knew wouldn’t work, but let me do it and then figure out how to go from there. It is this skill set I now use daily with my professional life and my lifelong endeavor to learn and problem solve collaboratively in a positive and adaptive way. He taught me to listen and learn first, to not just the problem, but the person and that the person always matters more than the problem.

I have been reflecting on what I can take away from the time I had with him, his influence and how to put that into words and those words into action and nothing sticks out more than his “GET OFF THE WALL” followed by the sharp whistle if it wasn’t heeded fast enough. When I distill it all down that is what he gave me. The idea that sitting or waiting or pausing is wasted time. If you are not moving the water around you to propel yourself forward then you are burning the clock. That to go forward you have to put that energy out there, even when the water is freezing, even when you don’t want to, even if it is 5am and dark out, even when it is hard, even when there are countless other things pulling at you, you must still do something, to not be idle uselessly. That if you want to see something move or change, you and only you, control that water in front of you and around you. No one else can do it.