My 6-Year-Old Son Drowned In Our Pool. Here’s What I Wish I Had Known To Keep Him Safe.

On the first day of his training, Henry had to dive to the bottom of the deep end, retrieve a brick and swim with it to the shallow end. Even though he was strong and played sports, he found it hard to do, and at least two of his fellow students couldn’t complete the task. When Henry came home and told us about the exercise, we couldn’t help but wonder if we had made the right decision. Would he be able to handle the physical rigor and emotional stress of this job? And could we? 

Getting safety-certified wasn’t easy. Henry nearly missed his sister’s eighth-grade graduation due to lifeguard training. But he persevered, earned his certification and was hired at a pool in our community. From the get-go, he was hyper-vigilant.

On his first day at the pool, he surprised his peers and supervisor by proactively asking them to locate the safety equipment. For Henry, water safety was not an abstraction. It was urgently real. He fully understood the importance of safety training and safe pool management.

As statistics bear out, drowning incidents happen all the time ― even when lots of safety precautions have been taken. It is terribly easy (even typical) for a parent or caregiver to become distracted while watching toddlers play in the kiddie pool and, even worse, while also trying to keep an eye on their older kids in the main pool. It happens!

For lifeguards, unanticipated dangers lurk everywhere. Many pools are overcrowded, and it can be difficult to monitor children who become hidden. In larger pools, sightlines are often obscured by columns and curves. Glare on the water can mask danger. And unanticipated distractions for the lifeguard can be especially risky.

Despite warnings from well-intentioned friends in the drowning prevention movement, the pitfalls and risks (emotional and otherwise) never overwhelmed Henry. I feel deeply touched by his seriousness and courage, given the tragedy we had lived through with Zachary.

By the end of the summer, the closest Henry came to rescuing someone was when he offered to help an older gentleman navigate the pool stairs on his way out. The man gruffly rebuffed the offer, but Henry stood nearby to make sure that the man was able to safely hold his footing.

No family should ever have to endure the loss of a child. When a parent turns to me, with fear and sympathy in their eyes, they will often ask how they can learn from Zachary’s loss and prevent this from happening to them. We share easy-to-remember lifesaving tools, like the ABCDs of drowning prevention.

There should always be an Adult present with eye-to-eye contact on the child swimming. Barriers, like fences and gates, are a must for restricting children’s access to the water. Families should enroll in Classes ― swim lessons for kids and CPR training for adults. Drains should be regularly inspected for broken and/or loose covers. And proper lifesaving Devices, i.e. U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jackets, should be worn at all times in open water.

After our family’s devastating loss, I never would have imagined that my other children would take on what has become my life’s work. Maybe Henry didn’t realize what the impact would be for me when he agreed to try lifeguarding, but his decision made me deeply proud. His willingness to be vulnerable and address our family’s trauma head-on is a source of strength and hope.

During the year of Zachary’s 21st birthday, I look back and feel grateful for life’s lessons learned and the opportunity to hopefully prevent a tragic loss for others.   

Karen Cohn co-founded The ZAC Foundation in 2008 with her husband, Brian Cohn, after their 6-year-old son, Zachary Archer Cohn, drowned when his arm became entrapped in a pool drain. Zachary’s memory is the inspiration for the foundation’s mission and activities. The ZAC Foundation has funded free water safety and swim camps for more than 20,000 children in at-risk communities nationwide and is spearheading the development of drowning prevention plans in four U.S. communities in the hopes of reducing the national drowning rate. Through her role at The ZAC Foundation, Karen has testified before congressional subcommittees as well as before state and federal agencies, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She has written about water safety issues for major media outlets and is also a Northeast Trustee of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

This piece originally ran on HuffPost in June 2022 and is being rerun as part of HuffPost Personal’s “Best Of” series.