Water and Pools Can Take us Away
There are people who swim on a normal basis. I know a few. Most of them do laps and get their exercise, both physical and mental. Some depend on it as a way to acquire the peace and comfort, or the way of life that allows them to be how they wish to be: strong, moving, working out, getting their limbs stretched and healthier and feeling better, their blood and heart and vital organs flowing and pumping well, to include the brain, which in the end is likely the main organ that drives everything.
Water and ammonia and chlorine and H2O. That is therapeutic for a few I know; I am glad that they have this mode and mechanism to work out, swim, release their hormones or pheromones or demons or monsters or better angels, whatever the metaphor or process is. Exercise. At the pool, in the pool, going back to the chlorinated waters.
Swimming. Doing laps. Moving. Churning. Completing strokes, achieving the goals set, the routines laid out. Making it across the pool tiles towards the next wall, the next flag, the next milestone.
An active, healthy life. Life giving, generating, inspiring. Pools and waters help restore and relieve, assist in bringing the swimmer closer to what they seek. Respite, restoration, and all the good "r" words.
Relaxation. Rest. Right living. Working in the lanes of restorative liquids and soul stimulation.
Good on ya. With a clean bill of health. Water and pools, yay! To include hot tubs and spas. Hurrah for their life giving sustenance and presence!
On the contrary, with waters and pools, rivers and oceans, lakes and streams, and even factory cesspools and pits of overflowing acids and gases and leaked oils and solvents, there is the dark side of what pools can do. Not to mention pools of blood or other human wastes.
Why so dark? Because with all good there is bad, with all light there is dark, with the appreciation for all things good and bright, there ought to be contrasts of what is good and bad, happy and sad, pleasant and painful. We can bring the good and meaningful from the polar opposites, those stories and realities that awaken us from ignorant slumber, prick our consciences from innocent ecstasy toward the harsh yet honest realization of mortality, in all its sheer beauty and depth.
I know and know of some people who died in pools and bodies of water. It happens. We cannot, or at least I shall not, forget the things and places and people who perished by the very means in which others derive their blissful exercises and workouts, or carefree frolicking and play. Unlike the otters my sons and I saw cavorting in the pristine waters of Maine, these poor folks found their last breaths near the watery surfaces where they were attempting to recreate or play in. Not fair, not nice, but real. Hence my tales of their fates. James Joyce derived beauty and pathos from the cruel fates of death on contemplative nights under the cold, falling snow. I wish to share my own stories of reflective woe and remembrance, grateful for people and times past and tragedies survived. We make it past these hurdles and challenges, and count our numerous blessings.
Not far from my house growing up there was a public pool where some poor victims drowned. I was there one day, maybe age ten or so, when a young man disappeared in the four foot area of the large Olympic-sized pool. He may have been partially obscured on that warm sunny day because of the swim lane chord with its plastic floating apparatus. What was supposed to separate the more organized, serious, if you will, swimmers, ended up being part of the end of this little guy. Was he older than me? Perhaps. Was he from the country, the outer neighborhoods and houses of Monroe County, or was he a townie like me? I never knew. I did not know him personally, but he impacted me.
That otherwise normal afternoon he was moved to a gurney, then into the ambulance. They put an oxygen mask on his face. I saw them come and go, hushed or humbled by their movements and somber meanings. I do not think that he made it.
Gone, after a would-be fun, summer pool day. He slipped, or never new how to really hold his breath, or how to float and paddle. He would never be a future boy friend, or older uncle, or cousin, or husband, father, and on. Not his fate. Not to be.
Like my first grade mate Jeff Kinzer, who apparently went under the ice in a rural county country creek with his brother; maybe both perished in those frigid waters. Sunny or overcast, the Kinzer boys were claimed by the waters of unforgiving gripping and frigid tentacles likely close to their home. Out in the boondocks, where he was bussed into town to go to school with me. Water, hot, tepid, or cold, shallow or deep, fast moving or still, like a living thing, a monster capable of swallowing us whole. An Indiana frozen stream. Two boys not out of elementary school, laid down in their smaller states, together on earth and now in heaven. Forty five or more years ago, for me, for us, thinking of better sledding memories and experiences.
We recall them, these watery victims, as shadows of who they might have been. Christmas past and future to not play out for them, like so many of us year after year. We should be relieved and thankful for our own lives kept and retained, that we did not meet these tragic circumstances wherever we have found ourselves.
In the summer in my later twenties, the placid reservoir north of town, Lake Lemon, claimed the life of the roommate of Michael Van (name slightly altered), who was a young man from the nation of Colombia, who maybe did not know how to swim. Or maybe it was a severe cramp? Mike did not know him well, but noted the empty space left behind by this erstwhile friend and budding man in a foreign land.
In Israel my roommate Shaeffer and I both pushed too far into a dark, water-filled corridor in a fun and refreshing water park. Israel, the land of living waters, for millions, almost snuffed out him or me. I was less threatened, as I held my breathe in that tunnel of water and did not dive as deeply in as him. His recounting was harrowing, and humbling. There for the grace of God, we kept enough air in our lungs and kept our brains alive and well, coming away from the Holy Land vibrant and ready for the next adventures of life. May we live forever!
Some will drown in boating mishaps, some children will slip into pools in backyards, others may crash in from a bridge or a slick road. How many people drown per year? In our country alone? Across the world, it might add up to the millions. What of the Spanish Armada, for instance? Or the Chinese fleets making their way to Japan and its divine winds.
The two boys of Santa Juana disappeared into the swirling quagmire of the local river, the great Bio Bio. This was the summer of 1990-1991, in Chile, where Christmas and New Year's are hot and dry. My missionary partner and I, Elder Newton, went to the home of the family and friends of the two young men that we would never meet. Maybe their bodies were never found? The river took them.
A young man I knew at Brigham Young University, a native American or First Nation strong youth from upper British Colombia, Canada, was taken by his local river up there, somewhere. I knew he and his sister the summer of 1993, but when I saw her a year or so later she sadly explained that her younger brother died in a canoeing mishap. I was shocked. Was he wearing a life vest? I do not think that he had one. Either way, his life was over. She had left him up north. More than thirty years ago. Not married, not college graduated, a still photo capturing who he was to so many. What river fed by the Yukon or Northwest Territories, perhaps, or the Canadian Rockies of B.C. or Alberta. Which snows and ice became the liquids that would embrace, embalm, and snuff out this poor soul's spirit.
It matters not. Some say it was meant to be. I beg to differ. We are not supposed to be drowned or have our heads knocked about by boats or rocks or waterfalls in streams and rivers, oceans and lakes. Right? We are not supposed to be sunken in battle ships, or crushed in submarine explosions, or freeze to death in ice berg sinking luxury cruises, or be swallowed up by titanic waves and overturned watercraft in storms or other crazy, wave-based anomalies.
No, not supposed to happen. But it happens. Missionaries drowned by the beach in the Canary Islands, a rogue wave. Missionaries sank in a high Bolivian lake, the boat capsized. Regular ferry goers drown en masse in the Baltic Sea of Sweden, or the Bay of Bengal in India or Bangladesh, or the typhoon sweeps up a village of the Philippines, or a tornado and huge tempests sweep out camping girls in a Texas flood plain, or the hollows of the mountains of North Carolina.
No, no, no! But alas, yes, yes, and so tearfully yes. Water comes in the least expected ways and flood and drown the dozens and hundreds of us. If not frozen or drowned at sea, some seamen and sailors are more horrifically consumed by the frenzies of the sharks, like the U.S.S. Indianapolis of World War II in the South Pacific.
My beloved aged Arabic teacher, Helmy Raphael, who in his last breathe spoke to his partner teacher back in California, "I am going, I am going!", he exclaimed excitedly as he approached the Minnesota lake dock to allegedly take a trip in a kayak, by himself, without a life jacket.
Helmy was found beneath the lake waters. Death by drowning.
It happens. We of his last Arabic class attended his funeral at the local Catholic church, bigger than Egyptian-born Helmy's Coptic church, which would not contain the number to bid farewell to him, and his three adult children. Helmy lived out his life, and gave back to many, and us. His Arabic papers sit on our kitchen table this Christmas season as my son prepares to learn more of that ancient tongue, learning to speak the language of the Copts and the Orthodox of the Middle East.
Jonah did not drown in the waters of the Mediterranean, on the way to Tarsus, Spain. John and Jesus dunked themselves in the River Jordan two thousand years ago, revivifying their lungs and spirits for greater climes and altitudes above. And thus to others, baptism represents death of the spirit and the body, but signifies the soaring nature of our souls: onward and upward, we will fill our chests and throats and mouths with the cries and songs of victory and glory.
Hallelujah! Hosanna! We breathe in and out, absorbing the invigorating airs of freedom and love, gasping and grasping, forever beyond the clutches and pangs of the stultifying depths of the waters and oxygen-less atmospheres of the void of space, the waves of hate or apathy that wash over too much of humanity.
Oh, no, not me! Stand back, deadly waters of the Red Sea, or the tempestuous crests of the Galilee, that would destroy wayward or little-faith fishermen of millennia-past. No, I will surpass these troubled waters, these bridges that buoy us and carry us beyond the inundations and craven storms of all times, both physical and mental, the life-giving and death provoking waters that might surge us ahead, refresh our souls, but a minute later soak us, sink us, and suffocate us to the point of no return.
What will it be, waters and waves of shores and rivers and lakes and pools that go on and on beyond the spaces of time and the universe?
What will it be?
Life or death? I say to you and them all, I will take both: I will receive them all, and I will gladly hold my breath and subsequently open up my lungs freely to the waters and waves and surges and flows and lapping wakes, where I will go and who I will be what I was placed here to do.
Take the plunge. I am coming in.
