Broken Heart
by Curtis Ebbesmeyer


In the best-selling book and major motion
picture Message in a Bottle, a grieving
sailor sent touching letters telling of his lost
love. For symmetrical irony, during a storm
off Cape Hatteras, he followed her to a
watery grave. Though fictional, messages
longing after lost loves do actually wash up.

Satellite Beach, northeastern Florida,
Tuesday during June 2000, about midnight.
Searching for sea turtle eggs, Brian Priest,
11, discovered a small, square-shaped glass
bottle containing a moist message.
Disappointed at not finding a treasure map,
Brian discovered an undated and unsigned
message on a patterned paper torn from a
day planner with "Notes" printed at top and
"1994 Day Runner Inc." at the bottom.

" . . . To say that one man has caused my
heart to grieve so seems cruel, but my
heart is indeed crushed and nothing will
ever make that particular hurt go away,"
she’d penned into her day-timer. "It is
stamped into my heart like a footprint in
the sand. But just as I know of God’s
goodness, I do have to believe that the
tides of the ocean washing over a
footprint will be like the ocean of God’s
love washing over me . . . "

"Will I ever be lover, soul-mate, wife?"

"My wish & dream that stretches as far
as the ocean is that peace and joy will fill
up all the places in my heart — the happy
and the sad. Maybe then some other
dreams will come true.

"Thank you God for an ocean to open up to —
to share our desires and hear our prayers.
I will find peace and strength in its beauty," she concluded.

A note on oceanography. Releasing a bottle in 1994 would allow as many as six years of drift. In three years, currents often carry bottles round the North Atlantic; six years allows for two times around between America and Europe.

There’s another aspect to six years that’s not often appreciated. Bottles ‘round the Atlantic often travel at 10 miles a day. Six years is enough time for a bottle to travel
some 22,000 miles, roughly the distance around Earth at the Equator. So it’s possible Brian’s bottle floated a long way, possible explaining why the cork crumbled.

(Thanks Marge Bell and Sue Bradley for sending in the 19 June 2000 Florida Today news clipping by Milt Salamon.)


from http://beachcombers.org/



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