August: The Mind.What a Terrible Thing

        AUGUST:  THE DROWNING



    With every wave that came crashing down over the top of my head I found myself being pushed further and further from the shore.  I turned around in the water to see, off in the distance, a life jacket floating on top of the water.  With each passing swell we bobbed up and down as one with the water, me looking at it, it looking at me, it was a macabre sort of a dance.  Before my mind even knew what my arms were doing I found myself swimming towards it, but after a few lonely minutes I gave up, realizing it was not getting any closer and most likely never would.  I watched the life jacket for a little while, hoping that at some point an errant wave might push it within reaching distance.  It  seemed to have a mind of its own though, at times floating just close enough to give me a glimmer of hope then just as I readied myself to begin swimming towards it, it would suddenly begin drifting away, as if it had thrown itself in reverse.  I quickly came to the conclusion that the life jacket was possessed or at the least had a mean streak running through it.  Life jacket my ass.  After a while I grew tired of its games and instead turned my head away from it as a child would, ignoring its taunts and teases.   

    My back was aching so badly that I felt the urge to cry out loud. 

    I looked down into the water to see a shimmer of chrome gleaning off the front rim of my cherished ten speed bicycle. I did not know why I was still holding onto it, switching it off between hands.  My arms had started growing heavy, heavy to the point I could barely lift them up to the top of the water. With a fond adieu I released my grip on the bicycle and watched as it sank out of sight.  A thought in my mind repeated over and over that a good soldier would never leave a man behind.  I was suddenly stricken with a sense of guilt. I felt as though I had given up on my best friend.  With an extra hand free to paddle through the waves, tired, cold and hungry, I tried swimming towards shore, but after several yards, after what seemed like a hundred miles, I found that I could swim no further.  I had run out of choices, what little hope I’d once had was now lost.  There was nothing else to do but give up. 

    I tried taking in a deep breath but the pain that had begun radiating from my lower back and up into my rib cage wouldn’t allow me.  This time I cried out in pain.

    The water didn't feel very cold to the touch, but then again it didn't feel very warm either.  I guessed that it's temperature was probably in the upper eighties, not quite Jacuzzi weather but then again on a hot summer day after working out in the yard cutting the grass or say building a deck the temperature would have been just perfect.  One of the ways to gain rank quickly within the Coast Guard is to educate yourself.  I myself had attended numerous classes and had a wall of certificates to prove my willingness to learn just to make a paygrade higher, enough extra money to buy a brand new motorcycle and pay it off within a couple of years.  Funny thing that I found out about holding rank is that you don’t have to be smart to have it, you just have to be book smart and that is a huge difference which is something the Navy has never seemed to have grasped.  I've always wondered how many commanders there were out there who made their grade just to buy a house but not really give a crap about the corps. 

    Of the many schools I've attended at the academy one in particular had to do with heat deprivation.  Basically, it was a survival school for people who didn't want to leave the classroom to test their personal limitations by trying to survive mannonmanno against the elements.  One of the chapters they went over briefly involved falling overboard and the consequences the human body undertakes until it is either rescued or drowns.  In the class, between donut and bathroom breaks I was taught was that our bodies are nothing more than huge heating and cooling systems.  If we get too hot our brain is going to fry, if we get too cold our brain is going to close shop and die.  Our inner thermostat tries to regulate itself to stay at a comfortable 98 degree’s which is actually harder than you might think, especially when you're forced to try and sustain that temperature in waters ten degrees below its normal threshold.  Any temperature below ninety-eight degrees and the body has to stoke its internal furnace to try and keep up with the heat loss.  Our bodies do that through proper nutrition, calories.  Although interesting I won't go into the whole metabolism thing, what you need to know is that the colder you get, the more calories you burn.  So if you’re overweight, try jogging when its below freezing outside.  In my case, as I hadn't eaten for more than twelve hours, I knew it was just a matter of time until my internal furnace began to go out and I could feel the flame beginning to flicker.  The bottom line was this little dip in the pool would eventually be my death sentence as it wouldn’t be very long until hypothermia began to set in.  In a way I welcomed the cold, I knew what it was going to do to my body, my brain functions.  First of all, without my feeling a thing the cold was going to numb every nerve ending in my body, then my heart rate would begin to slow down and finally my brain, cold and lonely, no longer able to communicate to any of my extremities, would begin shutting down blood flow in order for itself to stay warm.  The brain would, lets say, go to sleep.  Which is very good but it would make  it easier to accept the inevitable.  As I went over this scenario in my mind at some point the sad truth of the matter sank in, even now I couldn’t save my own life if I’d found myself floating next to a dock. 



    I looked up at the night sky and began searching for the North Star.  I was not seeking Polaris for its guidance, I'd only wanted to see it, as one might want to see an old friend one last time before leaving to go back home.  The star had been my constant companion since  my mother first pointed it out to me one late fall night when I was five years old.  She used to rest my head in the crook of her arm at the base of her bicep and using the length of her arm as a guide tell me to look up just past the tip of her index finger towards where she was pointing.  Slowly, she would turn around in circles and ask if I could see the stars.  At some point I could feel her slow down and begin to tilt backwards all the while asking if I were looking at the tip of her fingers.  Gently she would sweep across the night sky until she came to a halt, her finger pointed towards the brightest star in our galaxy.  It was then that she would ask me if I could see it, if I could see the spoon.  Of course I loved every minute of being with her just as happy to be cradled in my mothers arms and listen to her soothing voice speaking to me as though I were an adult.  I think I knew even then that my mother knew that I was only saying yes to make her happy, that I couldn’t tell one star from the next.  But eventually the day came that I was able to make out the tiny dots in the sky and connect them using my imagination and that was the day that I actually saw the Dipper in all of its glory.  The day I saw the brightest star in the sky was the day my life was changed forever and I owe it all to my mothers patience and guidance.  I remember seeing the Little Dipper for the first time that day as my mother saw it, through her eyes, as so many others had seen it before even her throughout the ages.  Since then the North Star and I have been on many journeys.  It has always been there for me, a way to stay in touch with friends and family that were thousands of miles away. 

    My last night on earth, I was blessed with a beautiful, cloudless sky.  The moon, though full, was no competition against the millions of stars glistening across the blackened canvas.  With what little strength I had left I began paddling in the water, turning slowly towards my right, stopping at forty-five degree intervals until Ursa Major came into view.  Following the outermost stars along its ladle I looked to where they pointed until I was able to pick Ursa Minor out of the thousands of other constellations.  The bright north star was a welcoming sight and brought a tear to my eye to think that was probably the last time I would ever see it again.  For a moment I was back home sitting on the steps of my parents house.  My mother was standing beside me pointing at the Little Dipper once again.  I swear I could all but feel the warmth of her skin as I laid my head across her arm once again and looked down towards the tip of her finger to where she was pointing.