Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

The current was carrying me away from the boat, so I tried to swim into it. Even with my strongest freestyle stroke I didn’t make any headway, and I soon realized that I couldn’t swim into the waves, especially loaded down with the air tanks and weight belt, and keep breathing unless I kept my mask on and used the remaining air from my tanks. I’d come up to the surface in the first place because I was running out of air, and I needed that air not only to breathe but also to stay afloat, because my BCD was leaking slightly, and I had to keep reinflating it. What about my diving weights? The advantage to keeping them on was that they slowed the rate at which I was drifting away from the boat. The disadvantage was that they likewise slowed my swimming and might be increasing the drag on my ever-deflating BCD. I tried to awaken my logical mind and make a decision, but despite more than a half hour to think about it, I had no idea what to do. The others had to be on board by now, getting ready to come look for me. The divemaster, despite the lack of landmarks, knew where I’d surfaced. I’d gone in only one direction: that of the current. It couldn’t be so hard to find me. I kept the weights on, figuring that the closer I was to the boat, the easier I’d be to find.

Then there was nothing to be done but to let myself drift with the current and conserve energy, my face away from the wind and the boat, surrounded by the limitless sea.

Finally, I heard a reassuring sound. The boat’s engine fired up. I breathed a great sigh of relief, spun around, resumed my Olympian waving—and watched as the boat chugged into gear and set off in the opposite direction. Away from me, speeding into the horizon.

Now I was alone at sea, with nothing but water and sky in every direction. There was no one to wave to, nothing to swim toward. For the first time that morning, I thought, “People die this way.” I assumed that the current was sweeping me farther out to sea. I remembered that the Pacific Ocean is a rather large body of water; I remembered that there are sharks in it—most of them harmless, but some, aggressive. My bobbling little head seemed a small target for whoever might ultimately come out to search.

Sometimes I felt scared stiff; sometimes I thought that I’d be fine so long as my BCD worked and I could simply float for a day or two. I’d never fully imagined drowning, and I wondered how long it would take and how painful it would be. I couldn’t bear the possibility of being unable to breathe, though I dimly remembered that some people who had been revived after nearly drowning had said the experience conferred a certain semifinal peace. I speculated how long the remaining air in my tank would keep me afloat. I was so tired; I wondered whether I would eventually fall asleep even floating in the sea.

Then I heard the voices of my parents. I envisaged my father saying, “You took this risk so you could see exotic fish?” I could hear him suggesting that I try spending way too much time in aquariums instead. Not a cloud scuttled across the sky, and I imagined my mother, who had died twenty-five years earlier, chastising, “This is why you should always, always wear sunblock.”

The waves seemed to be growing. If I drifted out beyond the reef, I’d be rolling in huge swells, and I wouldn’t keep my head above water for long.

Sometimes I tried to swim again, just for something to do, and then gave up again.

And no one came. And another twenty minutes passed. And forty minutes passed. And an hour passed.

I felt sorry for John, who would be worrying on board. I envisioned John and Sue explaining to George what had happened. I thought about my daughter Blaine, who was in Texas with her mother, and I felt crestfallen that I might miss her growing up; I was so curious about who my children would become. I thought of Oliver and Lucy, our older children, who lived in Minneapolis with their two moms. I had accomplished much of what I’d always wanted from life: love, children, adventure, a meaningful career. I was grateful for the life I’d had, even if I wasn’t going to have much more of it. I thought that my disappearance might kill my father, and I regretted his pain. Mostly, I worried that my children might feel I had abandoned them, and I felt guilty about that—guilty and terribly sad. I wondered whether they would remember me.