Mourning, this painful ordeal that marks life, affects the world, celebrities and anonymous alike. And everyone experiences it in their own way, as shown by this moving story that occurred in Gironde, on Wednesday January 3, 2024. A bottle thrown into the sea in the United States traveled the Atlantic Ocean before being found, on a beach in the town of Montalivet. It was Jean Rouchaud, a history and geography teacher at a high school in Périgueux (Dordogne), who discovered the said bottle and its letter, coming from the town of Provincetown in Massachusetts (United States) . Questioned by France 3 Aquitaine, he explained: “This morning, by chance, I saw a bottle. There was something in it, with writing. I took it home and opened it”. In the glass container, sealed with a stopper and a layer of paraffin, the professor then discovered A mourning message from a daughter to her father. The letter, dated March 19, 2022, mentions a man who died at the age of 77 in 2021. According to his daughter, the latter would have had a strong link with the oceanhence his gesture to pay tribute to him.
The girl was found on Facebook by the teacher
The deceased man was in fact a pilot in the port of Boston, more than 6,000 km from the Gironde. “The latter was apparently boss of a towing boat. Obviously, the sea was something fundamental to him, and his daughter threw two bottles into the sea. One at the time of his death and the second, for the first anniversary of his death., explained the professor. In turquoise ink, his daughter, an American named Jodi Lin, recounted particularly moving words: “You are my legend. Everyone who knew you loved you, admired you, respected you for who you were. […] You were generous and fundamentally kind. I am more than proud to have been your daughter”. After a few moments of hesitation, the teacher, moved by these words, then tried to find the young woman on Facebook and informed her of his discovery. “I had the impression that for the sender, her father was in paradise, in the ocean. And that this letter was a way of communicating with him. So I wondered if she was really waiting for a response. How was Does she take the fact that we found her?”confided Jean Rouchaud to the microphone of France 3, before explaining that his interlocutor had ended up answering him. “She confirmed everything I had deduced about her father’s life. And she explained to me that when she was overwhelmed by grief, she wrote to him”he concluded.