I am a person who enjoys the water, even though my first encounter with the ocean was unpleasant. I was two years old and got knocked off my feet by a wave, going completely underwater and coming up terrified. It wasn’t long before I shook off that fear, but I kept a healthy respect for water and how dangerous it can be.

Growing up, most of our family vacations were planned around the beach. When my children were still living at home, our vacations were also mostly about going to the ocean. When you live in land-locked Indiana, you go to the mountains or the ocean on vacation, the two things we do not have.

But water is much more than the ocean. It is in lakes, in rivers and creeks and in swimming pools. It is in bathtubs and pots and cups. Water is necessary for life.

When my daughter was a young woman, she participated in a trip with an organization called Wine to Water. She went to the Amazon, and they worked to repair a well in a village in Columbia. The trip changed her views about many things, and she was amazed at the primitive way the people they were helping still lived. She became very sick and feverish while she was there, possibly from wading in the water in the Amazon River, or from something she ate or drank, but she was too sick to even think to have someone contact her family. Thankfully, she recovered, continued working and came home safely.

We have lived on a lake since my youngest child was born. He is now 33. So, the lake and water sports have been a big part of what our family enjoys, as well as boats and fishing. Our lives revolved around the water of our lake as soon as the weather warmed up. We watched sunsets turn orange on the horizon or saw the sun sparkling on the blue water. The beauty of the water always delighted us.

When I think of water, I also think of water used for washing. Washing usually has a certain connotation, either work or relaxation. But it meant something else to me when my husband passed away and the nurse from hospice asked if I wanted to wash his body. I had been touching him and holding his hand after he died, and his body still had warmth. I felt the warmth leaving his skin, and that is when the nurse arrived. I said that I would, I didn’t know what to do. We began washing him, but his body was as cold as porcelain, it felt like nothing I had experienced before. It broke my heart. I felt like it forced me to accept that no living force resided in his body anymore, which I knew, but it was something else. I’m not sure what it was. Perhaps I felt death’s cold touch, the one who took my husband. I took no pleasure in it, felt no wonderful closure from it. The memory of that experience sticks with me, and I think of it when I think of water.

Water is such a big part of my life, and I know I am blessed beyond what I could ever imagine that I have constant access to clean water. Water is a wonderful and beautiful thing. I am drinking it right now.

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