When I was 15 or so and my sister Mary was 10 or so, we were staying on Cape Cod because my dad was working at Woods Hole Institute. We were renting a house on the beach. Cocky then as now, I felt certain I would be able to manage a two-person sunfish sailboat. But Mary and I got caught by the riptide and we were swept down the shore by it. Far enough to alarm mom and dad. They raced down to a point where they thought they could intercept us. It was deceptive because every time I tacked toward the shore the riptide would carry us further down the beach. We made it, but not without alarm bells going off about getting caught in an ebb tide and being sucked out to sea.

My current experience of tidal undertows marks the transition between living and dying

When we die, we’ll be the last to know that we’ve entered the cosmic undertow

We won’t know that we’ve died just entered the next part of life’s flow

Whether riptide or ebb, we’ll be in a new part of life’s interconnecting cosmic web