The Tragedy

Tragedies, they can happen any day, anyplace, and anytime. But you never think you will get caught in the middle of one. Last weekend, a couple of my family members and I met up at Port Washington so we could have a little fun before school started. And it was fun. At first anyway.

            The excitement of the trip started when we first got there. I didn’t expect our designated meeting place to be a beautiful playground overlooking lake Michigan. With everything from picnic tables to swings this was the best park I had ever been to. It was like a mini castle. Exploring the features of the gigantic play area is what we decided to do until my aunt and cousin arrived. We were busy playing on a simulation wakeboard when they came bounding toward us with excited expressions on their faces. None of us could wait to get on with the fun although our ideas of it were very different. My mom, for example, wanted to lay on her towel and sun bathe. The water was simply screaming my cousin’s name, and I just wanted to get my feet a little wet and play some beach volleyball. Unfortunately I only got to one of those things before it happened.

            Just as my Aunt had challenged me to a game, we heard a voice far off in the distance. We couldn’t tell who, or what, was making this peculiar noise. It sounded like a whisper. After a minute or two of trying to identify it, we shrugged our shoulders and went back to our game. I was winning our game 2-1 when a boy in a blue and black striped swimsuit was spotted frantically swimming to shore. Bounding up onto the sand screaming, “Help! Help! Help! Somebody call 9-1-1!” he looked frazzled and confused. My mom, who had her phone on her, whipped it out and dialed.

            “What!” She said frantically “What’s wrong? What happened?” The boy did his best to explain under the circumstances.

            “Me and my friend, we were just out there, and, and, a wave came, and he said he couldn’t breathe so I tried to save him. But I was getting water in my mouth and I couldn’t breathe either so I had to swim back, He’s out there somewhere. Please help. Please help.” By the time I sorted myself out and comprehended what was happening, my mom had already called and the boy had run off to somewhere.

            We stayed for a little while after that to see if they would find the boy. After about 45 minutes of sitting around waiting, trying to find him, we decided it would be better to let the scene play out and not be involved anymore. Not at all interested in sticking around to see his lifeless body pulled out of the water (at this point there was less than a 1% chance he could possibly still be alive), my aunt suggested we get something to eat. Even though it was only quarter to 4, and we had just witnessed about as close you can get to a death, all of us had skipped lunch so we were starved.

            Now let me tell you, it is just as well as impossible to find a restaurant open at 4 O’clock in the afternoon in Port Washington. Everything, and I mean everything, is open until 2, then closes and reopens at 4:30. We had no choice but to climb the stairs of an outdoor restaurant overlooking the lake right next to the place where the boy had gone missing. That’s why, when the search helicopter started making its rounds we were right there to watch it. Around and around it went, circling farther and farther, covering more and more ground each time. We just couldn’t get the thought of the poor boy out of our heads. It didn’t help that out waitress just happened to be the coast guards wife. She had not yet gotten the “lowdown” from him so she wanted us to repeat the whole story to her. We did unwillingly. All we wanted to do was put it behind us but we couldn’t.

            We must have repeated that story about a hundred times that day. To our family, friends, total strangers who wanted to know what was going on, everybody. And every time we relived the moment. That moment of sadness, sympathy, and understanding. That moment when everything else goes away. That day I got caught in the middle of a tragedy, and I will never forget it.

About the Victim

After this all happened I found out more about him on the news. The boy’s name was Tyler Buczek. He was 14 years old, on the high school football team and valedictorian of his class. Tyler was found dead 3 days after he drowned, 200 yards away from the filtration plant where he first went under.