JULY 29, 2021 – Late yesterday afternoon, we arrived at the door of my wife’s cousin Kathy, a short walk from Lake Michigan off Milwaukee’s South Shore. Kathy had moved into the Bayview neighborhood a few months ago and was eager to show us around.
Kathy’s sister Sandy, who lives nearby, joined us. Together we strolled south to a sprawling park along a small marina and swimming beach before reaching a large beer garden. Lots of people were on hand, enjoying a perfectly beautiful summer day. While my wife and her cousins joined the ordering queue, I held down seats amidst a sea of tables occupied by smiles and light chatter. Near where I sat was a row of flowering milkweed plants. Among them flitted a monarch as if in imitation of the boats of the colorful regatta then in progress out on the lake.
In time, Beth, Kathy, and Sandy joined me. For the next hour or so, we imbibed in pleasant conversation. The monarch left.
From nowhere a sheriff’s SUV disrupted the scene. A hush swept over the crowd. Distant sirens grew closer. Soon more emergency vehicles, lights flashing, were upon us. The center of attention was a group of people on a rocky outcropping 200 hundred feet away.
We then noticed someone’s head bobbing in the water away from shore, between a couple of moorings inside the breakwater. Beth thought she saw a second head bobbing. By this time, an EMS vehicle arrived on the scene. Half a dozen personnel strode to the end of the rocks as a police watercraft arrived at the opening to the breakwater. The shore-bound personnel signaled frantically to their counterparts aboard the vessel.
Within seconds, the boat was alongside the bobbing heads. One person was pulled aboard, then a second, who helped by throwing a leg over the low gunwale of the rescue boat. The crowd applauded.
By this time the scene was awash in flashing red lights—and blue lights of a second police watercraft. We were struck by how quietly the emergency had arisen and how suddenly it was unfolding.
Our hearts stopped when we saw an EMT aboard the boat working the rigorous chest compressions of CPR. He continued relentlessly. As time passed, the compressions sucked hope from the air. A beautiful evening was going horribly wrong as we watched helplessly.
With heavy hearts we climbed the knoll overlooking the parking lot of the marina, where no fewer than 17 emergency vehicles were assembled. The victim was shunted onto a gurney and rolled to an ambulance. CPR had ceased.
From our distant vantage point, we saw the young woman who’d tried to rescue the victim. Wrapped in towels, she sat on the tailgate of one of the emergency vehicles, as an EMT crouched beside her.
Like the monarch flitting about the milkweed, I thought, life full and beating is fragile and ephemeral, beating one moment, then no more forever.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
