Live Like You Are Dying

Live Like You Are Dying

As I lay motionless on my back, I collect enough energy to open my eyes for the first time in hours. Staring straight up at the ominously gray sky, I start to scratch off the thick layers of salt that was caked onto my face and entire body. For a moment I had a hard time recognizing where I was. This was not like any other place I had ever been before, unknown and ambiguous to most. The heat was unbearable. Looking down at my arms, I was not sure if I was seeing correctly because the color of my skin was far more red than normal. I felt like there was no escape. I was trapped. This couldn’t be hell, could it? “No”, I thought to myself, this is far worse.

My family and I had never been out deep-sea fishing before and wanted to try it since we were in one of the best fishing spots in the world, St. Thomas. We chartered a boat called “Double Header” and as a group, we decided our destination would be the Second Sea Mount, a place our Captain Colin called his gold spot because he has always been overly successful with bringing in fish. Captain Colin, a man in his late thirties, seemed to be a man who knew his stuff. He had captained enormous tankers earlier in his career so we felt we were in good hands.

As we sailed out of the Sapphire Bay Harbor the sky was still as jet black as it was when I went to bed just a short while ago. An hour into the trip we passed the sister island to St. Thomas, St. John, when my older brother Danny started to notice the swells beginning to intensify. Simultaneously, he started to notice nausea overwhelming him. Within moments he darted to the side of the 40-foot Dorado and regurgitated the entire chocolate chip muffin he had for breakfast. This was just the start of the most memorable 15 hours of my life.

As I looked up from my most uncomfortable cooler bed, I started choking on a mouthful of salt water and I was convinced I was underwater. As I rolled my lifeless body over, I could only see gigantic mountains of foamy green water on each side of the mighty little Dorado. Even though the waves and swells had now reached the likes of 20 feet, the captain was still fishing.

Danny was hunched in the corner dry heaving. He had to keep consuming water so he would have something in his stomach to throw up. I guess that cooler that was filled with sandwiches and beer was more useful as a bed. It was amazing to see that Danny still had the energy to fish. As I lay motionless, I hear the blood-curdling screech of the fishing line go out as we had a hit. Danny almost turning deep blue in the face pulled in a fifty-five pound Wahoo. The fish shined so brightly even in the dreary weather.

The legendary Captain Colin, whom was used to the seas behaving the way they were, was not breaking a sweat. He kept on chugging along deeper into the gloomy abyss. All around us the waves crashed and the sky boomed. My trust in Captain Colin was diminishing by the second.

The boat was now consistently being thrown around and we were victims of one of the tail ends of a tropical storm. The boat was giving us all she had but that just did not seem to be enough. The hat that started the day on my head was now somewhere fifty miles back in the depths of the Caribbean Sea, thanks to the whipping winds that we had encountered.

This was not the trip I signed up for. We were supposed to be having a beer, fishing, and enjoying each other’s company. But no, instead we were fighting for our lives with no life vests on board. If one of us went over, we weren’t coming back. It seemed all I could do was pray that we somehow we would get back home safely.

Feeling frightened and overwhelmed with shock as to what was going on, I could not help but wonder the outcome. The end could be so near and I have only lived so little. I now regretted the insulting comments said to my mother before I left my house in Massachusetts. I wish I could go back home and hug her, tell her I love, her, and say I was sorry for what I said. Now instead, I can only hope that I am not put to rest in a frothy floating coffin.

As the storm intensified, the boat started to deteriorate. The bow started to slowly gain water and it was apparent we were going down faster than the Titanic. Waves were hitting the boat with brute force. As the boat slowly went under, my grip started to weaken. In the distance I saw the final wave that would terminate my time on the boat.

As the wave crashed into me, my body was engulfed and swallowed by the sea. Opening my eyes underwater and swimming to the surface, I franticly searched for Danny. There he was floating lifelessly. As I grabbed him, I saw captain Colin in the distance on a lifeboat. It took everything I had to swim over to the boat. The waves were simultaneously crashing over my head as I tried to bring my brother to safety.

As feelings of death grew closer and closer, my life flashed in front of me. All the great childhood memories of sledding down the hill next to my house with my brother started to bring a tear to my eye. Never again would I be able to make memories like that with my family.

Finally reaching the lifeboat was a relief, but the battle was not over. The small ten-foot lifeboat was our only hope of survival. As I sat cold and petrified for my life, I couldn’t help but wonder, “What if we do not come back?” The flow of “what if’s” kept running through my mind and I couldn’t get it out of my head.

Every day is not promised to us. Today could always be our last. Living everyday to the fullest and not having any regrets has become a necessity as to how I now live my life. I always find myself giving back to others because I may not be able to share what I have to give the world tomorrow. When one is put into near death experiences, one can learn life lessons that can be taught nowhere else but in the moment of distress. Looking back at my experience, do I wish that I never stepped foot on that boat? No. I take everything that happened that day and grow from the experience. Living life in the moment is far more important than living life for the future.