I am amazed almost every day that I am now 80 years old. For about 72 of those years, water has been an influencer. At first I was fearful of any body of water, especially where it was too deep to stand. Then at 8 years of age, a Navy Frogman I met while on vacation with my family, with patience and understanding, gave me the knowledge and courage to navigate across the pool. He led me into what would become my lifelong immersion in water.

I didn’t know then that the water would become my salvation. My therapist. My escape, and where I would be surrounded by my chosen family when tragedy took my own family.

MATTHEW

My youngest child of three, Matthew, was born under terrible circumstances. When my wife, Eileen, and I made it to the hospital, monitors revealed fetal distress. The attending staff immediately rang for the obstetrician but could not locate him. They would not proceed without him.

A subsequent investigation revealed that while the "captain" was engaged in an extra-marital activity, my boy, my Mathew, was deprived of proper oxygen for almost two hours. When the doctor finally arrived on scene, Eileen was immediately rushed to the OR. I watched the surgical procedure from behind glass and Matthew came out blue, not the normal pink of a healthy child.

Matthew was blind, would never talk, walk, think, reason, or function without intense ambient care. The only sense Matt did possess was an acute sense of hearing. He would lift his head up toward sounds and eventually even laughed. His life with severe cerebral palsy broke my heart.

Matt lived and laughed for seven years. Then one day, my wife came into our bedroom after going to get Matt up for the day, screaming out of control. Matt was not breathing. He had inhaled vomit during the night, and his body was cold. I immediately retrieved him, cleared his mouth of debris, and began CPR. To no avail.

Eileen ran out into the street screaming. The neighbors quickly gathered around her, everyone in shock. I never recovered totally from this. None of us did.

JASON

My older boy and middle child, Jason, seemed to have developed lingering emotional distress from Matt's death. They shared a bedroom with cowboy-styled bunk beds, and Jason became debilitatingly engrossed with the thought that it was his fault Matt choked to death. He believed he should have protected his baby brother but couldn't.

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As a 10-year-old harboring that kind of emotional distress, it began to mount to the point that it noticeably affected his day-to-day activities. Professional therapy couldn’t rectify the demons. We thought Jason adjusted well enough, but once he left for college and was away from our constant effort to keep his perspective positive, negative influences infiltrated. He joined a fraternity and became consumed with the "party life” that seemed to come free with that kind of atmosphere.

After a year of this, he could not maintain school and left. I forced him into entering the military, where he quickly thrived. He earned “soldier of the month” at his training base, was regarded by his superiors as having great potential, was learning some top secret material he couldn’t tell us about, and captured his emotional growth into manhood by writing poetry — which we didn’t know he knew how to do.

Then his college demons found him. To keep on his top-secret path, former associates were interviewed. One shared undesirable things from the past. In light of that, Jason had to take lie-detector tests. And in wanting to stay on this new path, and keep his troubled collegiate past in the past, he failed the test. Offered a downgrade in training to something he felt below him or the option of general discharge, he opted to leave the military. After finding himself, and embracing his new purpose — to the point of writing about it all in poems — leaving the military
would become his death sentence.

Jason decided to move to Key West, where my daughter and oldest, Lee, was living. He landed a job working overnight security in a hotel and was making things work. Happy days for mom and pop Nessel. But a week after Jason turned 21, he worked an overnight shift and decided to drive right afterward to visit friends in Miami. After a meal and a glass of wine, and a night shift of no sleep, he fell asleep at the wheel and was killed in a head-on crash.

Back home in NJ, again my wife ran out to the street screaming. The neighbors couldn't believe this happened again. I couldn't believe it. I was in a state of catatonia, barely able to breathe. It was 11 years after Matthew died.

EILEEN

About a year later, Eileen began showing signs of what was thought to be Parkinson's Disease. Medicine to treat it did not work, so further medical investigation showed ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Which is a death sentence.

Yet again, I was hit with an emotional bomb. Eileen was my rock, the anchor of the family, the one person I could count on to support me in my time of desperate emotional need. As she became weaker as the disease took hold, I began my internal hate for what life had brought before me. The age-old question: "What did I do to deserve this?" Further, what did my poor, lovely, caring wife do to deserve this?

 

It seemed I was doomed to drown in my own misery. I rose above the loss of my two boys, and now the woman I counted on, relied upon, leaned upon for almost everything was being taken from me. She was getting progressively weaker and losing more function, and now it was my turn and obligation to care for her as she had cared for us all.

Several medical experts offered the same prognosis and description of what we would face in the coming months. As it were, we fought the disease as best we could, totally sapping my emotional energy daily and spilling over into my physical wellbeing.

What seemed to help keep my head figuratively above water was the daily need to train in the pool, to coach several swimmers, and to become immersed into the realm of helping others more than feeling sorry for myself. I needed the water time and the socialization of team-togetherness to help get me out of the house each morning. It became such that I needed my swimmers at least as much as they needed me.

As Eileen was approaching her final days, I became morose. The water provided my
desperately needed emotional rescue.

 

I had just come home from an intense practice where everything went well. The home health nurse we had almost around the clock had just left. I had to change her diaper for the evening, and while I was doing so, she just stopped breathing. Her blue countenance became dramatic, and I immediately performed CPR with about 300 chest compressions until I was exhausted. I called 911 before working on Eileen, and when they came into the house, she was gone.

I had experienced intense, intimate death already having lost both my boys. Now the caretaker was in desperate need of caretaking. This was 11 years after Jason's death. Eleven seemed to have a hold on the Nessels. Eileen's birthday was November 11 (11/11).

THE WATER

Thank God for the water. We cannot control our dreams, and mine forced me to relive the horrors. Some days were terribly fraught with intense emotional dysfunction. But I was able to still be a contributing, functioning member of society by feeding off my swimming and coaching.

I don't believe time heals all wounds. Time does NOT heal; it allows one to DEAL with the horror of loss. I had to deal with what I call the greatest perversion in life: to bury a child. I had to bury two. Then the loss of my anchor, my rock, my safe harbor, my Eileen, provided me with the absolute realization that life isn’t fair. It presents instances, sometimes horribly profound, from which we either endure and manage and move forward, or we succumb to spiraling downward. In a few simple words, we can either sink or swim. I am a swimmer!