The Cold Water Cut Through Me Like A Knife

The water was cold, so cold it sent shivers up my spine as I swallowed a big drink of it and sank into the darkness of the lake. Dirt swirled around my face, and I couldn't move, although I kept trying to swim up to the surface. I tugged and pulled at my scarf, adrenaline kicking in and fear coursing through my body. I couldn't get free! My scarf was stuck on something but the water was so dirty I couldn't see what. I squirmed and tugged with the last of my strength until I finally lapsed into darkness.

They say when you pass away, you go back to the event that caused you to die the way you did.

I was aware of a beautiful sunny day, my mother putting water wings on my sister, and me sitting next to the pool, refusing to put mine on. Mom walked toward me, and I screamed. She wasn't putting those stupid rubber things on me! Something that made me bob up and down on the water's surface like a yo-yo. I jumped in the cold, blue water and came right back up, laughing and swimming away from my mother yelling at me to get out of the pool! She should know I was the best swimmer in the entire town, and I could stay under the water longer than anybody else in my class.

The blow came quickly and hard, right on top of my head and hard enough to knock me out. Everything went black, and I woke up in the hospital not able to remember anything that had happened over the past two days. My mother hovered over me, and my sister kept leaving the room crying, whining about water wings. Slowly, I remembered the incident, but it didn't discourage me. I blamed the diver who didn't look before he jumped off the board, not myself.

I wore the stupid water wings when my mother looked away and ripped them off as soon as she was out of sight. I told my sister, Jenny, that if she told, I would hold her under the water until she stopped blowing bubbles, so she never said a word.

It was Labor Day weekend, and my sister and I talked my mother into letting us go to the lake together and swim without her. We didn't want her hovering over us, and maybe we would have a chance to make some friends. We walked to the far side of the lake, and I began pulling off my clothes down to my bathing suit. Jenny was busy putting her water wings on, and then I stopped her. Those things made her look like a baby, so she could stay in the shallow end.

Jenny sighed and nodded in agreement, then threw her water wings on the ground and sauntered toward the lake. I gave her a quick boot in the butt with my knee, laughed, telling her not to be such a pouty face, and then ran off to say hi to a girl I knew from school. I wasn't paying any attention to Jenny; she was old enough to take care of herself, even if mom babied her . I didn't even think about her until I heard a scream across the lake and saw a couple of kids dragging something out of the lake, something very familiar.

"Jenny!" I screamed and ran out of the water and across the dirt as fast as possible, but I already knew it was too late. Jenny's white face and blue lips told me that she'd been underwater for some time, but even so, the oldest kid in the group was trying desperately to give her CPR, while another kid was calling emergency on his cell phone.

That was the incident that caused me to drown, my stubborn insistence that I knew everything, and that insistence was the reason my sister Jenny drowned. I deserved to see how that felt, and now I did. It wasn't enough that I spent my life feeling guilty about how careless I had been and the outcome of that carelessness, I had to re-live it in death.

Still, something inside me felt better, relieved, almost like a confession. The sky began to turn a beautiful blue, and a bright light formed in front of me. A small figure formed in the light; I immediately knew it was Jenny. I smiled until my lips hurt and we embraced the way you embrace in heaven!