Keith

He was a fellow dive instructor at the resort where I worked, in the Bahamas.
I was friendly, brilliant, naïve, calculating, selfish, helpful, competent and endearing. It was impossible not to like him and he was hugely popular with the staff and the tourists. He was blond and baby-faced, with a tiny moustache without which he would have looked all of fourteen.

He was twenty-one and although as strong as an ox, he had an odd, overweight body that did much harm to his success with girls.

I can still hear his funny giggle, his eyes bright and laughing.
He was young, reckless, at an age where one’s own mortality is as foreign a notion as Mandarin.
He and I had a friendly competition going on between us: which would freedive the deepest. We were both fish, lacking only gills. We were doing 100 feet then, a feat I’ve never done before or since.

Anderson often mentions how it can be hard to remember someone for his life and not for his death. He refers to his brother’s suicide. It’s very true. When I think of Keith, some 15 years later, I still mostly remember the anguish, the pain, the loss, the shock and throughout, the unwavering Bahamian sunshine.

One Halloween night, a friend of ours, dressed horribly, went to Keith's place to give him a good fright. He succeeded and Keith, who was no coward, jumped out of his skin, the "fight response" in high gear, ready to beat the creature to a pulp. We had such a laugh about it the next morning while Keith was telling the tale. It was the last laugh Keith and we had at his expense.

Later that morning, he took a boat out with his two best friends and Jacques Mayol. They anchored on Theo's wreck, which top lies at about 100 feet. The freiter was sunk just on the edge of the continental ledge. Beyond it, the slope gently descends to about 2000 feet and the aqua of the water turns into a darker navy shade.

While Mayol was getting ready, Master Keith decided to jump in ahead and freedive Theo's. His two best friends were dive instructors as well. We were trained to be responsible for anybody that hit the water…we forgot ourselves. It was not in our mentality. In the South, instructors neglected (and likely still do) the sacrosanct buddy-system because the truth is, we were our own best help in case of an emergency. The water was a second home. We were competent and comfortable.

However, the laws of physics and physiology rule even the best of instructors. Keith never came back up, was never seen again. His twenty-second birthday was two weeks away.

It was so brutal, so unexpected, so out of character that it took me months to recover and years to heal. I told his story over and over, as if telling it would make it tangible or believable.

Hey Keith, what's up mon?