The Murderkill River is a quarter mile from where I sit. I see it out my window. It winds down from interior Delaware into Delaware Bay, another quarter mile away. It looks like most rivers, a meandering blue that rises and settles with the bay’s tides. During a full moon, its water snakes through the wetlands, and the distance between me and the Murderkill’s shallow overflow is measured in feet.
When you walk to JP’s Wharf, a local restaurant along the river, you see the current going in or going out. The murky blue is swift. Ducks float atop, speeding upriver or downriver depending on the fates of the tides. The waters twirl quickly around dock pilings, creating small whirlpools. If you know anything about water, you wonder about the currents two feet down, where the water is chilly. You never see anyone in the water even when temperatures exceed 90F.
Across the river, there’s a sandy point separating the river’s mouth from Delaware Bay.
Yesterday afternoon, four individuals decided to go for a swim. It’s thought they were near the point. The current caught them. An observer went in and rescued two. The other two vanished.
My wife watched rescue crews and divers, along with local jet skiers and fishermen, rush past our home on Main Street to Bowers Beach. She walked down.
More rescue workers in trucks or towing trailers with rescue boats passed her. None of them honored the 25 mph speed limit. They were from the towns of Magnolia, Millsboro, New Castle, and others whose names I don’t remember. They came to help rescue workers from Bower’s Beach and South Bowers. Most were volunteer firefighters and rescue workers. They worked alongside the Coast Guard, state troopers, and workers from the Department of Transportation, who created the staging area.
Helicopters flew up and down the river. Rescue skiffs patrolled the shores. Divers plunged the depths, and others searched under the pilings. You could see the Bower’s divers—dressed in their red wet suits that covered them from head to toe.
My wife stood with the onlookers a distance from the staging area. She watched as boats plied the river and as divers worked the water. She along with the rest were quiet except for an occasional comment or thought about the promise of the rescue.
There were more than 100 people in the area, a massive gathering for a town of slightly more than 300. Around 6:00, my wife and other onlookers left for home, dinner, and a chance to understand the dark fate of those two individuals.
After dinner, I walked down to the staging area. The strobes atop the rescue vehicles flashed red, white, and blue. Men milled about the site. At 8:30. they called the search. I watched as the rescue vehicles, trucks with rescue boats hitched to a trailer, and pickup trucks weaved between the orange pilings set up by the DOT workers. They drove down Clifton Cubbage Drive and returned to their stations or homes. As I went to leave, a rescue boat sailed upriver--one last time.
I walked up Main Street. I passed the firehouse. A firefighter in her mid-thirties was shaking out a red wetsuit, spraying it with water, flipping it, shaking it, and spraying the other side. She looked depressed. I wanted to ask if they found one of the other two swimmers. I thought best to leave her alone.
The two missing weren’t found as of this morning, but the search will continue.
Throughout the episode, one fact was missing--constantly. The ethnicity of the swimmers. It wasn't mentioned by rescue workers, onlookers, or reporters.
There was a simple reason. It didn’t and doesn't matter. Two people are missing. Their families are upset and possibly already grieving.
The community came together for these individuals. You might call it kindness. I think it intuitive. It's an intuitive response to the great equalizers of human existence: danger and death. We know its pain, its finality. We don't want to bear it. We don't want others to bear it. We will go to great effort and expense in an attempt to ensure those outcomes.
It’s great that we as human beings can easily and quickly recognize the humanity of others. The protestors are doing it in the streets of America. Once is not enough. Life should be the great equalizer, not death.
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