Something that felt too raw to post at the time, now, almost a year later I can

Recently I lost someone. I should say a man I didn't know, or just knew of, a friend of the family, was lost. His family lost him, his friends lost him. He was lost at sea. A man I knew, or knew of, was swept from his boat, from the deck my brother and father had stood on just weeks before, hauling lines and facing winds. There was no difference between when this man was on his boat and when my brother and father were on the boat, there was no great disadvantage to his location, no lack of knowledge (of the sea or the boat or the wind), there was no lack of crew, no lack of expertise aboard. There were storms, and wind and nights, and shifts in watch and all had gone smoothly as it had for them for seven previous summers. But this day, this change in watch, there was a rouge wave, two in fact. And two men were washed out of the boat and only one man was washed back in. Strong winds and a broken rudder meant procedures could not be obeyed, meant that thrown lines dragged through water, through hands. The boat could not stop or turn. One man, trying to save two. One man, left in the water, stayed in the water. While my father slept in his bed, while my brother brushed his youngest son's teeth, they on dry land. They safe from waves. It could have been them. Strange that in our streaming, gleaming modern age, full of gps's and sonar and satalite everything, the sea still trumps all. Sailors can die today the way they have for a thousand years, and we mourn them. We see only black sails.