I’ve been struggling
I don’t know about all of you, but it’s the night before the kids go back to school, and I’ve been struggling. Thanks to my lovely period and the fact that my boys are getting older, I’m feeling all of the emotions.
Besides the fact that summers go too fast and winters last too long, there’s also something very heavy that’s been on my mind for a majority of the summer and now it appears to have come to a head this weekend.
Our lovely school community lost a little boy in a drowning accident on the lake this weekend. He’s just a year older than Jonny, who’s going into 5th grade and I just can’t stop thinking about that family. How they were supposed to have their son starting his last year of elementary school and instead…….
That lake has had a few incidents since it’s reopening a few years ago. There are no lifeguards and I think since everyone believes that it’s so open and relatively shallow for a while, that nothing will happen. I’ve wanted to write about this for awhile since it seems to creep up into the forefront of my mind when I least expect it, but haven’t found a good time, or moment to truly grasp the magnitiude of it all.
June 29th of this year, my boys and I went to Lake Pacawa with our 10 week old puppy. Fishing reels in tow, as well as our blow up kayak and all of the accoutrements necessary for an afternoon at the beach (and yes….I totally looked up how to spell that). The boys, being confident in their fishing abilities now, wanted to paddle out in the lake on the kayak and have their hand at fishing away from the shore. They had their life jackets and I was on the dock with the new pup, so we were good to go. Our puppy, Cindel, was semi-strapped to our wagon since I forgot her leash, but since she was only about 10lbs at the time, she couldn’t pull it very much. I caught a few tiny bluegills and introduced her to them, which I gleefully recorded on my phone, as she tried to sniff them, but the fish kept flopping around on the dock. I could see and hear the boys having a good time while they tried to maneuver both paddles and fishing reels in the not-so big kayak.
At that moment, I hear someone yelling “Help!” from the water. I hear it a few more times, “Help! HELP!” and it takes me a second to understand what’s going on. I locate where the yelling is coming from and see a woman flopping around in the middle of the lake with nothing around her. Now, I feel like I had seen paddle boarders, kayaks and paddle boats many times in the last hour, but of course, I saw NO ONE now. So I quickly yell to the boys to come back to the dock and watch Cindel, I make sure she’s still pretty much tied up, take off my swimsuit cover up and jump in the water. I swim out to her (which seemed like an eternity and a second, all at once), all the while, telling her it’ll be ok and to calm down. I stay about 8 feet away from her, because in that instant, I’m like “I can’t pull you in.” I didn’t have a life jacket on, nor did I have any floatation device. I swam out there, not thinking and just basically came to calm her down and let her know she wasn’t alone.
I asked her name, told her mine. She said she didn’t want to die and told her that there was no way that was happening. I asked if she could float on her back? She tried but said she was just so exhausted and wasn’t the best swimmer. She had fallen off of her paddle board, and with the strong winds that day, the board just took off without her on it and she was stuck. I kept talking to her, trying to calm her down, letting her know she wasn’t alone, all the while, keeping an eye on the boys, who had now made it back to the dock….where I see, my damn dog had gotten loose *eyeroll. So I yell to Jameson to stay with Cindel, he jumps in the water and gets back on the dock and then I yell for Jonny to paddle towards the woman and I. He finally makes it to us, what with the strong winds, that 10 year old used those arms! The woman and I grabbed onto the sides of the kayak, I told Jonny to just sit and I would swim us back (I didn’t want him to accidentally hit her with the ore…..because Lord knows, that wouldn’t have helped the situation).
When we all got back and settled our nerves, she told me that she felt so stupid, that she has a life jacket in the car, but just didn’t bring it. She harps on her kids to wear them, and she didn’t. The wind took her paddle board and she panicked. I walked her back to her family to make sure she was ok. We all hugged and went on with our day.
Since then, I feel like I’ve been slightly holding my breath. I had a good cry about the situation later that afternoon and just couldn’t shake any of it. She could’ve drowned in front of me. She could’ve freaked out and pulled me down. My boys could’ve seen that, they could have seen someone die and also their mother. It makes me sick to my stomach. Jon and I have been training for a half marathon all summer and since that day….there’s not a run that happens, where my mind doesn’t drift to those moments. For something that lasted 10-15 mins and could have been so life altering….I don’t talk about it. I try not to think about it. I’m never the one who brings it up. My close friends and obviously my husband, will bring it up, but I never do.
All of this being said, I don’t want a “way to go” “that’s amazing” or whatever…..there are 2 important things that I feel like need to be reinforced with that incident.
Always wear a life jacket. It seems dumb….I have to admit, I haven’t always worn one, but I do now. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how big you are, how strong or good of a swimmer you are……WEAR IT. You can get flustered, confused, panicked. You can hit your head on something and not be conscious. Wear it.
If you are someone swimming out to help someone else…..Keep your distance. I don’t know how I had the foresight (is that the right word for that right now?) to know in that instance, that she could panic and pull me down too, but I did. Keep your distance unless you absolutely know you can take them with you (a child for instance), and wait for help.
We were all lucky that day. My heart is completely shattered for the little boy and his family who weren’t lucky this last weekend. Things can happen in a blink of an eye and you just have no idea. I was definitely hugging my little guys a little longer and a little tighter tonight.
Hopefully now that I’ve written this out, it’ll weigh less on my mind…probably not, but who knows?
