The university where I
got my BA required all students to take a semester of swimming in order to
graduate. I had been to the beach on occasion
in my nineteen years on Earth, but I was from south Texas, desert country, and
few of us knew how to swim. I
waded. I let the waves splash me. I had no idea what to expect from a “swimming
class.”
While the other students
took off like fish, I had to learn how to keep my eyes open while holding my
breath under water. The college instructor required me to come in every day and
she would help me learn the basics. I went from scared-to-death tadpole to
swimmer in that one semester. To get my PE credit, I swam twenty laps across
the school’s Olympic- sized pool, demonstrating a different swim stroke with
each lap. I did twenty dunks in the deep
end where I had to plunge myself downward, hit the pool bottom, and shoot
upward to catch my breath before going back down again.
It was the most frightening
experience I had ever faced, but I had no choice if I wanted my college
degree. I had to do what I was afraid to
do.
Life is like that – full
of frightening experiences that give us no choice. In order to survive, we have
to learn how to swim, whether we want to or not.
The death of a loved one
was not new for me. I was at the bedside of my grandparents, my brother, a
grandson, and my father, and held their hands and prayed for them as they took
their last breath. I was there, in the
deep end, water up to my chin, no choice.
We knew our mother’s
passing was inevitable, but still nothing prepared us for the day itself, the
loss of our mother. We each faced the same vast deep ahead of us, and we each
reacted to the onslaught differently.
Like the little fish in
the child’s movie, I kept swimming. I learned to go on, day by day. The days flowed
into weeks, the weeks into months, and now I get to count her passing in years.
Like that swimming class I took so long ago, I force my eyes open, I hold my
breath, and I learn to swim underwater.
I just keep swimming.
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