It’s true what they say. You never hear the bullet that’s meant for you.

In Alanna’s case, it was a wave.

She was riding the surf at Delray Beach where she swam almost every day, but especially when the water rose up in a fury as the tide began to turn. It was her favorite time to swim and that day the ocean was wild. Even though it pulled her out, it also pushed her back in and, with every swell, she felt the tug in one direction and then the other, waves heaving at her with enough power that she had to fight to stay in place. It was enormous, this pulling at her body. She could feel the earth’s rhythm in its force.

Everything has a rhythm. When you find the one that’s right for you, life falls into place with a kind of destiny. Maybe Alanna hadn’t found her rhythm yet. Maybe that explained the wave that clipped her.

Later she would think she shouldn’t have gone in alone that day. At least not there, so far from the protected part of the beach where the lifeguards monitored swimmers. But she walked the beach almost every morning, knew every inch of it, and Alanna always swam where no one else would go. She knew the sandbars and the rip holes, the places where a woman could be alone with her thoughts and the pounding water. The beach was hers, the surf her domain; the sun was shining; the day was perfect. When the ragged waves, the ones she couldn’t body surf, rose up in front of her, she dove as deep as she could through the crumbling curl and came up like a dolphin, sputtering on the back side. Then she turned to watch the wave retreat, rumble toward shore, its big hump in front of her obscuring a view of anything but the hill of blue, glittering in the sun.

And that’s where it happened. On a beautiful April morning, on the sunny beach where she’d ridden the waves happily so many times before.

She had just cleared a huge one. The swells were getting higher and deeper. She was on her way in—there’s the irony—and swimming an oblique line back toward the shore. It was slow going, but she knew from past experience that it was better than meeting the outgoing waves head on. That would have been too exhausting, fighting the tide as it pulled to the other side of the earth. How could one slender woman confront a force like that anyway?

The wave that clipped her by surprise was far taller than any of the others that day, almost as if it had her name on it. It roiled over her head—not a clean curl at all, but foamy, rough, and full of anger. Before she realized she was under it, slammed. It knocked out whatever reserve of air she had in her lungs. When she gasped, she took in a single rush of sea water, breathing it deep into her body. Did she struggle for seconds? Minutes? It was impossible to know, and soon enough Alanna was beyond caring. The wave gave her up to a greater force, a force that was beyond even the ocean’s power.

What surprised her was how easily it happened. How quickly the point comes where you no longer want to struggle, where you’re relieved not to think about it anymore. What’s the use? Most worry in life comes down to this. When it will happen to you. What it will feel like. Whether there will be pain, fear, loss.

And, of course, that nagging little question of where you go next.

Some of the stories are true it seems, because flashes of her life did slip by Alanna on that sunny day. Alanna as a little girl at the beach with her parents. Laughing and pushing away from her mother, even then wanting to ride the surf on her own. Alanna looking way out to the horizon where the ocean met the sky, Alanna knowing all her life that she’d been born for this water.