Down to My Very Last Breath
What I learned about life by almost drowning
Now that I am 76 and increasingly realizing in my bones and my joints that I am mortal, I would like to take the next few minutes to share just a little bit about the preciousness of life — something I’ve always sensed, but didn’t know for sure until the moment I almost died at 21.
Looking back to that time, 55 years ago, beyond the massive trauma of it all, I understand now what a great gift I was given, tough love from the universe, shock therapy for the soul.
I will spare you the back story and just cut to the chase.
Caught in a rip tide, I was drowning. I was going down for the third time, gulping water as I climbed an invisible ladder to nowhere, gasping for breath.
My strength was gone, completely sapped. I had nothing in the tank. Nothing. At that moment — only one thing was clear. I was just about to die.
This was the end.
As that realization entered what was left of my mind, I looked to the shore and read the epitaph that a stranger would write: “You will die here and people will remember you as the person who died here.”
That was it — my entire life reduced to a single sentence — me a cautionary tale on the back pages of a local…
