We had met Art and Jim a few days after leaving Samara. They were both attorneys in their mid-thirties from Miami, Art a public defender and Jim, a corporate lawyer. We stayed at the same hotel in the town of Montezuma on the Pacific coast of the Nicoya Peninsula and started exploring the surrounding jungle and waterfalls together. On our third day in town the four of us set out to walk down Playa Grande, a palm-lined white sand beach, in search of good waves.

With two boogie boards between us, we strolled with the hot sand feeling like paradise between our toes. We drank coconut milk fresh off the palm, a gift from a local with good machete skills, as Steph and I continued to take deep the breaths we had practiced.

We stopped for a swim, and Art and Jim grabbed the boards and headed out into the surf. Steph and I waded into the water, lost in conversation. We barely noticed the strong tide moving in. But every time we’d try to take a step out further we seemed to go nowhere.

I watched Art and Jim attempt a few rides, but the waves didn’t seem right. They were both heading in to shore when Steph and I suddenly felt ourselves being pulled out. One moment we were waist-deep and the next we were over our heads. I tried to swim back in. My childhood summers spent in the Atlantic Ocean made me a pretty confident swimmer. I turned to see if Steph was alright. Her eyes glazed with fear. I swam toward her and then realized all my kicking and stroking weren’t getting me anywhere.

I could swim neither in nor out, and the waves began to break where we were treading water. One after another, they rose in front of us and curled above our heads. We held our breath and dove down beneath each one. I dove as deep as I could, grabbing for the sand at the bottom to hold me down a moment longer until the wave had passed.

Another came. And then another. We kept going down. I felt a burning in my head, my chest. Another wave. I looked at Steph, and her eyes pierced through me. Her terror had given way to a vacant stare. I swiveled my body in the opposite direction and waved to Jim, who had just reached the beach. A wave hit me from behind as I saw him struggle away from the shore, toward us, fighting the tide. And then darkness.

No tunnel. No light. No last thoughts. No up or down. But deeper. I was spinning beneath the surface of the sea. I was ocean – motion and water. Unatman. What we call in Buddhism, non-self.

Any insight from books I’d read or the recent conversations I’d had with Steph, were gone. My life was not my life. I was not in control. I could not stand or breathe or think. The sea was not something I could read. It did not contain knowledge that could be understood. It contained water.

I went under the waves. I felt my body slip out of my skin and the ocean rush inside. I gave up more than breath. I gave up every part of myself.

Two years later I receive an email from Art saying that his most recent trip, to Brazil, has been cut short. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and has just returned to Ohio to be with his family and start chemo. He is writing in search of support and inspiration. The email is signed, “Your soon-to-be-bald friend.”

As I read his words, I can feel myself going under the waves again. It was Art who rescued me, reaching me just moments after Jim had grabbed Steph.

It was Art who held the boogie board beneath us and said calmly, “Breathe, breathe,” as the waves pounded on top of us, and the shore drifted in and out of my vision.
I hit “reply” to Art’s email and think about how to respond. It seems natural to tell him to fight. To hang on. But I don’t believe that advice would help. I ran my hands through the sand at the bottom of the ocean as I felt my own life slipping through my fingers. I know that there is nothing we can keep firmly in our grasp.

I think back to the day that Art, practically a total stranger, risked his own life to save mine. After he reached me, I felt the rebirth of fear, the urge to fight again, and I began to kick fiercely. But we were still caught in the tide. We clung to the board, my lungs burned, and my brain echoed back the inhuman sound of the waves breaking against my body.

Art kept repeating his calming mantra until I understood. He was telling me to relax and let go instead of fighting the ocean. We needed to wait until we were out of the rip tide so the waves could move us back toward shore. We needed to be saved by what was trying to kill us.

I stare at my computer and feel the familiar pull of the tide again. I write back. “Breathe.”

TARA LOHAN is a 2004 graduate of the University of Oregon’s literary nonfiction program.