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I've known two people who drowned in the prime of life. Separate incidents.
One of them was a lawyer I traveled with to a client's facility for a week. We weren't close friends or anything, but he and I spent a week traveling together, just the two of us. A couple years later I learned that he had been swept out to sea while swimming at dusk and he got caught in a riptide. My scout troop takes trips to the same beach every year, and even though we have all these safety systems in place, and we're good at managing the risks, I've stopped going on that trip because it scares me too much. Not relaxing at all. The two times I did go, I just stood on the beach counting heads in the surf over and over again for hours.
Second drowning victim is a guy I studied abroad with. Again, not super close, but there were 25 of us on a program together and there were plenty of times that I hung out with him in groups at parties and in class. I read in alumni class notes that he also drowned while on vacation someplace. No details. He would have been in his late 20s.
The only people close to me who have died were older and sick, so while it was heartbreaking, it wasn't a shock.
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