On July 2nd, 1989 Brenda and I, along with our two sons, Davey (3) and Jonathan (19 months) were travelling from West Cliff, Colorado, where I had been speaking at a youth camp, heading back to Marion, Indiana, where I served on staff at Lakeview Wesleyan Church. I had spoken at this camp a couple of times before and decided this time I’d love to take the whole family out to enjoy the beauty of the Rocky Mountains. Besides, my mother had just died three months earlier and I really dreaded being separated from the solice of being with my three favorite people in all the world. So I took vacation time and we made that 27 hour trek together in our little Honda Accord – stopping on the way there and back to see friends, family and make one or two tourist trap visits.
After the camp ended that Saturday (July 1), we drove all the way back to Topeka, KS, where I had been on staff at Fairlawn Heights Wesleyan Church prior to moving to Indiana. We attended Sunday services and were invited by Ed and Sharon Rotz to join their family for lunch and an afternoon at the pool of one of the parishioners. We were excited about getting to spend some time with folks we’d grown to love in our years there in Topeka.
At the pool that day, our boys, Davey and Jono, were playing well with the older kids from families there at the church. All of the adults had congregated down at the deep end of the pool while the kids splashed and played at the shallow end. Davey had already become quite a decent swimmer, even at three and a half. Jono was wearing the safety arm floats and was being carefully watched, it seemed, by a couple of the older girls. So we settled in comfortably to converse with our friends.
Suddenly someone screamed, “Jono!” I turned to see Jonathan, face down, in the shallow end with no movement and no pronounced ripples of water around him to indicate that he’d come to that position within the past few seconds.
All of the kids had gotten out of the pool and were snacking at the nearby picnic tables. Jono had taken his safety arm floats off for snack time. He had then slipped away from everyone, unoticed, to follow a ball that had trickled off the edge of the pool and into the water. Apparently in reaching to retrieve the ball, he fell into the water and no one knew exactly how long he had been there.
When I heard the scream from one of the older kids, I immediately began to swim to try to rescue my son. Before I could get there, Ben Rotz (about 9 years old at the time) jumped in the water, grabbed Jono around the waste and yanked him up the steps of the pool and out of the water. As I saw my son being dragged from the water, I was still a few yards away, trying to run through the shallow water and get there as fast as I could. His face was pale blue and there was no sign of breathing from his limp body. Having been a lifeguard, I had only seen that look once before. My heart sank.
It was not Jono’s day to leave us, though. By the time I got to the steps of the pool I heard the glorious sounds of coughing, spitting up and gasping for breath. The life began to come back into the face of my little buddy. Unknowingly, young Ben Rotz had saved Jono’s life by yanking so hard on his midsection as he drug him out of the water. Needless to say, we were beyond just being grateful to still have our son with us.
Soon after the incident we said our goodbyes to friends and hit the road for Chicago, where we would be rendezvousing with our staff at Wriggley Field for a July 4th Cubs game. On the way, still rejoicing over Jono’s miracle, I did the “dad thing” and talked to the boys about how much fun the day was. After some chit-chat and a moment of silence, Jono piped up, “I fall down.
“Yes, you did, Buddy. And you scared your Daddy and Mommy.”
Jono then said, “And I see Gwamma too, Daddy!”
My first reaction was surprise since, at his age, and given the long distance we lived from my parents, Jono had only seen Mom a few times in his short life. Before Mom’s death, they had been living in Southern California, where Mom was the Dean of Nursing at Azusa Pacific University. The boys spoke with them at least once a week via phone and we would exchange primitive VHS clips of the boys activities and grandparent greetings. But something told me that these were not just flippant, childish words from a kid who barely knew his Grandma. So I cautiously probed a bit further.
“Who did you see, Buddy?”
“I see Gwamma.”
I felt a lump in my throat and my eyes clouded over with tears. I wasn’t sure if this was a conversation I even wanted to continue. Then I felt Brenda’s hand touch my arm from the passenger seat. I looked over and saw her reassuring smile. So with her strength adding to the emotion of the moment, I choked out the next question to Jono.
“Are you sure you saw Grandma, Little Buddy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where did you see Grandma?”
“When I fall down. And Gwamma was sad, too.”
At that moment I envisioned my Mother’s face with her highly expressive, pleading eyes that always emerged when a subject of urgency or pain was discussed. It was the kind of face that could make a 19-month old child see hurt or sadness.
Barely able to compose myself by this time, I asked, “What did Grandma say to you, Jono?”
“She say, ‘Swim now, Jono! Swim!’”
I don’t know how to explain what my Little Buddy saw that day. But I often wonder if his vision of his Gwamma was what kept him from panicking and filling his lungs with irreversible amounts of water. Thus leaving enough earthly life for Ben to yank him up and inadvertently jumpstart his drowning little body. Or did he actually catch a glimpse of the other side where his Gwamma was encouraging him to stay in his earthsuit a while longer?
One day I’ll shed my earthsuit and find myself in the presence of God. I’m confident I’ll then know the answer to those questions. For now, though, it’s a joy to watch Jono grow and fall in love with Jesus more and more each day. Occassionally we talk about that day. And though he has no memory of those events, he does wear a smile when reminded of how sweet the plans must be that God has for Jono if he chooses to follow HIM.
