The Day I Almost Died
Reflections after a Near Drowning in February 2018
If you swim in the ocean you know the push of water. Water allures, and like all powerful things, deceives.
I was going far out forthefunofit. Overweight, I was still strong in mind if not body. I could touch bottom easily between swells and was not concerned. It was fun to go further a bit. I swam but grew tired quickly. I knew the current was pushing sideways but didn't worry as long as my toes could reach the sand.
Deciding to return to shore, I lay face down and swam for 15 strokes or so. I stopped and could not touch bottom. I dog-paddled for a minute or so, unaware I was going nowhere. Soon I realized my right leg was caught in a fisherman's line. He was waving his annoyance, about 80 feet away – no more than 100 feet away beyond pounding surf. I kick and paddled but could not loosen my leg, though the string was the least of my worries. After about 2 minutes' effort I was free of the string but moving sideways still, drifting beneath another fishing line as I paddled.
Unknowing, I was caught in a sideways rip-tide. I could not touch bottom and my paddling toward shore produced only exhaustion. I realized I may need to cry for help. “Surely I can make it!” I thought. My muscles ached and I tasted seawater. I thought of floating, but I have never been able to float. There was a most dim awareness I might die. My lungs burned as I treaded water.
Devin, my 12-year-old nephew, was 25 feet away on a boogie board. Dare I cry for help? Would I pull him down with me? I didn't want to be needlessly dramatic. But somehow I knew I must wave and cry for help.
The first time he didn't hear me. I waved with one hand and yelled weakly. From the shore no one could hear. I knew by the time I was truly desperate there would be little energy left for flailing and shouting. I struggled on, going nowhere. I learned later that drowning nearly always happens quietly. The fight exhausts the swimmer and all that remains is to sink beneath the waves. In a few minutes I would have done exactly that. By the time anyone noticed my absence it would have been too late.
Devin was still not far off and he was watching me. Devin is an unusual young man, one of those people who knows more than most, and knows it in ways unavailable to most. His care for people is plain and real and on the surface. He knows what matters without trying, and he is a gift to all who know him.
I think he knew I may need help and so he stayed nearby. He was looking at me intently as he drifted with a hand on the boogie board. I raised a hand and called for help. He heard me and called back, “Uncle Randy do you need help?”
“Yes. Please!”
He quickly pushed his board in my direction. We met in about 30 seconds and both held to the board. I was worried I might drag him down but the board did its job. After a minute or so of kicking I felt bottom and better, the push of a wave lifting me toward the beach and life. A minute later a crashing wave pushed me forward and I knelt in the rocky sand as the undertow returned without me. Barely able to stand, I shuffled toward the frustrated fishermen and tried to explain. Then I half stumbled, half walked the 200 feet to my wife, son, friends and family, sat down, still breathing heavily, and told them what happened.
What does this mean? I have spent the last many hours shuddering at what almost was. My wife and youngest son were there, as well as a niece, 3 nephews, and their friends. At minimum my drowning would have traumatized the afternoon and radically changed life for my wife and sons as well as my relatives; and in a much lesser sense, all who shared the beach that day. I almost died. It is certain I would have without help. It is unlikely I could have gotten anyone's attention; certainly in another minute I would have been unable to stay afloat to flail and cry for help. Pride – and a normal reluctance to cause undue drama – nearly cost me my life. And this is right enough. No one wants to cry out when it is not warranted. And we seldom encounter such near-death experiences – how would we know when to call for help? I certainly didn't. So I struggled, almost to my death.
Lack of knowledge, lack of awareness, lack of strength – all together these lacks would have cost me my life, except for the provision of Devin, my nephew. He knew without knowing that his Uncle needed help and he lingered near, saving my life.
I can barely process it. It is easy enough to speak the hubris: “I could have made it.” But that's false. And I ponder what my death would have meant. While I grieve deeply for what I would have missed in future years, I feel more the loss my loved ones would have felt. What is this gaping hole and emotional onslaught we call death. It rips loved ones from our hearts and crushes us with unalterable realness. And when I think how my untimely death would visit that upon them, I grieve.
No one wants to die, and somehow we make death distant and irrelevant, all the while knowing it comes to all. My great-grandfather drowned about 95 years ago. He was in his mid-20's with a wife and young daughter, my grandmother Freida. While his death was a great sadness to his family and close community, it is forgotten by most and will someday be gone even from the record books. Our lives are that way. The most important people die and are forgotten. Take a figure such as Alexander the Great – known of by countless millions over 2300 years of human history. Still his death remains unknown to most who ever lived.
So what matters – being known on a large scale? Nope. Being known at all? Yes – that matters a lot. I do not know what all of this means – I am pushing a rope, trying to understand. If I would have died today, the people I know would have suffered. I would have suffered for a short time, grieving, hopeless, muscles giving out, painful asphyxiation and death, drifting lifeless to sea or shore in time. I would have been no more for this world and those who remain would have been heart-broken. This is the weight of being, the weight of knowing, the truth of 'better to love and lose than never love at all.'
Why do we go on marrying and birthing, rearing and loving, building and caring and working and dying, only to do it again in the next generation? Are the endless waves a picture of this life, landing on shore with no end, no apparent reason except the cycle of being and life, water with mind-boggling volume and power and depth, yet able to sweep a simple human into its lapping arms and lull him to sleep?
Here is Ecclesiastes, of course, a wisdom one cannot know as well before near-death as after. It is easy to see how pointless life can be because, as the writer says, no matter what you do or what meaning you contribute, it all goes down with you at death – you can't keep it or prolong it for yourself after you yourself are gone. And gone you will be.
I almost died today and I have no fancy words. I only have words struggling to find meaning. I believe in God, the One who made all things, who gives and takes away, who cares, who holds funerals for fallen sparrows. That God saw a man almost fall today and sent a nephew to rescue him. "Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift!"
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| My Nephew Devin |
