There are rare moments in life that stay locked inside a persons heart forever. Beautiful moments like the first cry of their newborns or the way they felt when they said, I do, to the one they love the most.
And there are also moments of intense pain and horror that scar our hearts and sear images like snap shots in our mind, experiences so traumatizing they play on a loop in the background of our thoughts, and can be plucked from the mental archives to be relived at any time with intensity so strong it feels like time travel.
On Saturday, my friends and I experienced both.
Friday afternoon, 10 of us traveled to Van Buren, Mo., for our annual two-day girls-only float trip down the Current River for what history told us was guaranteed to be a good time.
And it was.
Right up until the very moment it stopped being a good time and started being a horror show that keeps us awake at night.
Split into two rafts of five, we set out on the river Saturday morning laughing, enjoying the beautiful weather and each others company. We made some new friends along the way and met up with other familiar faces from last years float.
A little over halfway through our four-hour trip downstream, we rounded a bend to find ourselves in the midst of an intense and serious scene that, at first, I thought must be some kind of altercation.
As a man pulled our rafts to the bank, we soon discovered it wasnt an altercation it was something much worse. Someone was trapped underwater. They were drowning. They had been under too long.
If you read the incident report from Saturday, you will learn the victim was a 21-year-old named Lucas Mehler from Hutsonville, Ill. It says he was a swimmer who was floating in the Current River when he became tangled in a branch and was unable to get out of the water.
But what happened that afternoon was so much more than that brief description.
What the report doesnt tell you about is the extraordinary lengths people went to trying to free the young man from the cool grip of that river. People who had never laid eyes on him, or one another, thought not of their own safety when moving into swift current toward him. They never hesitated to fight that fast-moving water to get a hand on him and pull him to safety.
I watched 30 strangers lock arms and stand shoulder to shoulder creating a phalanx across the rushing waters, digging their heels into the shifting gravel of the river bed, trying to gain purchase against a flow so strong it made the line waver and break.
Time slowed to a crawl as the tragedy played out. There were those who stood and cried, those who kneeled and prayed. Others didnt know what to do so they drifted to the background, and stood in shock. And then there were the doers, people who moved with an intense purpose, swallowing their fear and jumping to action to do whatever they could physically do to help the effort.
Like any performance, some people had large roles, like the tall slender woman who had immediately called 911 and stayed collected enough to keep dispatch updated, or the man who would be one of those in the river that got a hand on the victim and assisted in freeing him. Others had smaller roles, like delivering a rope or a life jacket to the ones putting their lives on the line to save another, or maybe offering a word of comfort to those who knew the trapped young man.
No matter our role, we were united in purpose get him, help him, save him. And if there was a single word that summed up the collective feeling among us all, it was helplessness.
I have never felt more helpless in my life, and I know I wasnt alone, wanting to navigate those waters and pluck him to safety
but not being able to. I wanted to stop time, knowing how desperately he needed air.
After several minutes that seemed like several hours, two men in the water were able to pull the victim from the grips of the branch that ensnared him with the help of a motorized boat, one like the boat my group and I had complained about sharing the river with earlier that morning.
We thought they were dangerous to those floating and rafting, but had it not been for that boat, the two men in the water wouldnt have been able to apply enough force against the current to free the boy.
And as they brought him to shore looking as fragile and defenseless as the day he was born, I saw men and women in swimsuits and swimming trunks transform from people on a mini vacation to the nurses and medical personnel they are at their 9-5 jobs. They never hesitated to utilize their training.
The day is still fresh in my mind, and may always be. I see a still frame of the woman on the phone, and another of the man, who I later discovered was an EMT, exhausted and struggling against the current and asking for more men to swim out and help.
He didnt leave Luke even after I tried to pull him away to make room for the women doing CPR.
I said, You did everything you could to help your friend.
Still wet from the water hed been fighting and shaking from fear and exhaustion he said, Maam, I dont know this boy. Then he let loose the tears of frustration and fear he had been holding back. He clumsily grabbed me and asked me to pray with him, and I did.
Im proud to say one of the women who did rescue breathing for Luke Mehler was with my group. She never faltered or second guessed her role. She dropped to her knees in the gravel and, along with others, she did her best to breath life back into this boy.
And even then the rest of us were helping the only way we knew how.
We prayed. We prayed out loud, we prayed in our heads. We clung to one another or held hands and prayed and cried for a boy we didnt know. We prayed for his family and for the people he must have been with on this trip because we knew it unlikely he floated alone.
We were strangers, but in those minutes along the riverbank under the summer sun, we held hands and hugged and cried for the life that was lost, and we called on God because it was all we could do to make it better.
When it was over, we unwillingly got back in our rafts and set back out on the water that no longer looked fun and inviting and drifted down to the landing zone. As we floated, I thought of the boys mother and the phone call she would be getting and my heart broke for her. I wondered how she would ever know that her son didnt just get caught on a branch in a river one June afternoon like the report said, but that the story was much bigger.
I wanted her to know he left the world surrounded by care, compassion and prayer, and we wept for him and for her and for all the others who lost him. That when he died, he wasnt with his mother, but he was near 10 women who were all mothers with children of our own, and in those final moments we saw him as we would see our own son or daughter, even if it was just for that small window as he passed from this life, and on to the next, he did so in the presence of a mothers love.
When Luke Mehler died, a level of humanity Ive never witnessed surrounded him. It was both horrible and beautiful at the same time. My faith in the human race was renewed 40 or more strangers were united in a mission to save him and then again in our grief, and for the rest of my days when I think we are living in dark times, and people dont care about one another, I will remember that day on the banks of the Current River and know that isnt true at all there is good in the hearts of men.
And late at night when sleep wont come to those of us who were there on Saturday, and we stare at our ceilings reliving those minutes that seemed like hours, we continue to pray for Luke and for his family and friends, and we grieve for a boy we never met with a face we will never forget.
Rest in Peace, Luke Mehler, and may God help your family find comfort, peace and understanding.
* A memorial scholarship fund has been established in remembrance of Lucas Evan Mehler. For more information, visit obituaries.expressionstributes.com/?of=8e9e294154.
(Amanda Layton is a staff writer for the Republic-Monitor. Email her at
alayton@perryvillenews.com.)
Posted in Opinion on Wednesday, July 3, 2013 1:06 pm. Updated: 4:00 pm.
