Death is easy, living is hard.

Death is easy, living is hard.

The day was beautiful. It was still a little overcast from all of the recent rain, the wind still had a chill in it but the sun was warm and the humidity was thick in the air. The rainstorm of that morning hadn’t done enough to abate that thick sweat-like feeling which clung to our skin as we made our way down to the river.

I had never gone to this part of the river from this direction, it seemed less like the jungle expedition I was used to and more like a treacherous descent into certain death. The large rocks which had been dumped along the bank to act as fortified fill to delay the erosion into my friend's front yard were sharp edged and green with slime caused by all the recent rain, and the various bushes and small trees were dwarfed by an old tree which stretched out over the water and tangled in wild rose and blackberry bushes.

As my friend and I moved cautiously down the bank, my flip flops holding my feet firm in the cracks of dirt between the rocks, she making small pain-filled complaints as she moved over them with bare feet, I was thankful for the protection the thin portion of plastic provided my tender toes.

I grew up outdoors, but had never acquired, nor wanted to acquire, that layer of skin which seemed to me to be hard as nails that other kids had on the bottom of their feet. I always took a quiet pride in my soft skin and tender feet thinking it somehow made me more “ladylike”. My friend had no such qualms; she eventually got to a certain precipice and sat down on the stones half submerged in water and let herself adjust to the cold water.

I on the other hand had never been so cautious.

Since I had first learned to swim, I had thrown myself into the river. I loved diving, cutting through the water with my arms outstretched fingers together imagining myself to be a spear or a submerged rocket slicing through the waves and current with ease. I wanted to be submerged all at once, loved the shock of it, the thrill and since I knew this part of the river like the back of my hand, I knew I could avoid the rest of the large boulders, slime and probably leech covered simply by jumping out a little further than normal.

So with feet together, toes pointed forward, arms back and legs coiled to spring I launched myself forward, using the pendulum swing of my arms to propel myself further out, hair flying back from my face knowing I would easily clear the stones that passed away below me.

As I came down, my back bending just a little bit forward my body surrounded all at once by the shock of the deep water that held the cold tight like a frightened mother to her dying child. I came down, the current caught me like it always did, but my muscles tensed and strained and my body remained straight despite that insistent push that tried to convert me into something as liquid and as formless as itself. I asserted my pose and sought the soft clay depths which I knew were ahead.

After what seemed like forever my outstretched hand finally brushed against the clay slab at the bottom of the river, my fingers dug in greedily, my arms flexed into a pull; I wanted as many handfuls of clay as I could get, and bring it back to shore to work with. I was around twelve and my artistic ambitions where getting stronger and I had begun to experiment with various different mediums to find the one that spoke to me. So, at every opportunity that I could, while swimming in the river just behind my house, I would haul up handful after handful of clay from the bottom of the river and carry it to the shore to see what I could make out of it.

As I kicked down to propel myself up toward the surface my flip flopped foot came down hard on one of the sharp edged rocks, with a sudden sharp yank and sort of a pop the flip flop let go, scraping the inside of my big toe as it got yanked down with a sudden jarring pain as the top of my foot smashed down into the rock and scraped down the edge.

I shot up to the surface, bobbing in place for a long moment trying to take inventory of my body making sure I was ok and without any broken bones, and then to keep myself from cursing when the searing pain hit along with the realization that I had taken a layer of skin off of the top of my foot, when my flip flop bobbed up to the surface beside me.

I smiled and reached out toward the bobbing flip flop as it moved toward the vortex that was the strongest current. My fingertips brushed at the flip flop but it narrowly avoided my grasp, my injured foot curled up behind me to keep it out of the way. I moved lazily along. A strong swimmer normally,  I propelled myself almost entirely with my arms letting the water move over me and push me inward toward the current and down the path of the river. Every once in a while just when I thought I had the flip flop in my grasp it would be snatched away again the speed of our travel growing ever more urgent.

It wasn’t until it was too late I heard it, the strangely hollow gunshot sound of a large tree branch falling; the old tree fell, green and leafy, into the water just behind me, the wake of its sudden impact pushing me roughly forward. I bumped up against one of its lesser branches which scratched at me; I turned around to look at the tree now upstream of me where my friend and her mother were standing on the edge of the river, surprise showing on their faces due to the sudden shock.

Her mother waved at me, asking me if I was ok. I yelled back a laughter-filled yeah and was struck suddenly by the realization that my friend and her mother were receding from me awfully quickly. As they got smaller and smaller on the horizon of my vision I put my feet down to slow down.

There was no ground to stop myself; my bruised and injured feet pushed against nothing but cold, cold water. The stronger inner current had got hold of me and was taking me quickly downstream with the large broken tree branch following me.

I wasn’t afraid yet, but that tightly coiling snake in the pit of my stomach that is called panic twitched purposefully. I fended off the panic and one of the smaller branches, pushing myself forward with my arms attempting to dodge limbs and see through leaves as I was tossed roughly about.

I was now very cold, having been in the water now longer than anyone in my group, the pain of it stinging the tops of my thighs and the outer surface of my arms. I was now scratched up from all the little edges of the branches around me and tired from the combination of both.

In the rivers of New England, sandbars are rare; most of our riverbeds are filled with rocks, most of which are the size larger than a human fist. This was the very reason why I always wore shoes swimming, to protect my feet from the stones. As I swam desperately for shore it was then my foot came down on the rocky river bed. I immediately recoiled my foot and went down hard face first into the water and was dragged under by the tree that moved above and around me.  

I became disoriented. I sucked in water through my nose and started to gag and cough. I came up gasping tangled in the tree. This happened over and over again, the rough current bashing me into the large blue stones of the river bank that I tried to stand up on. Inevitably lost my balance and second flip flop, causing me to stumble and go under once again landing hard.

I was moving too fast, the water was too deep beside the stones. I was growing more and more tired into this I sank, “pressed down by a physical exhaustion” (Chopin 264) that haunted my body and seemed to reach into my very soul. Every time the current or the tree dragged me under I fought less and less to find the right way up to the surface. When I clawed my way to the surface I was too busy gasping for air to scream, and I saw no one on the distant shore trying to save me.

I knew I was going to drown.

It was then the current ran me back first into another rock and I was pushed under for the last time. I had a sudden thought; it was not, and “this is how you die.” No, It was so profound that it shook me to the marrow of my being. I was overcome with a simple feeling beyond knowing as I looked up into the bright afternoon sky, and through the veil of white rushing water I saw the bubbles floating to the surface and all I could think was how truly beautiful life is before I closed my eyes...

Caroline pulled me out, carried me to shore and was slapping me on the back hoping I would breathe; I coughed and puked up water. It seemed like forever my body was overcome with shaking which seemed to come from my core. The world was filled with white starbursts in my darkened fuzzy vision. I was gasping, fighting for every breath, but most importantly of all, I was alive.