On a coastal path, high above the water, I watched a swimmer crossing the bay.

I could hear nothing except the far-off sounds of families on the beach and the waves gently breaking on the shore.

I remember thinking, this is heaven - above the earth, in the sun, observing life below.

A shadow followed the swimmer, getting closer.

There was a flash of white, as the surface of the water was disturbed, and the swimmer and the shadow disappeared.

I was paralyzed with fear and fascination as fishermen, shouting beneath me, turned their boat to the spot where the swimmer had been.

Later, I heard that the man had died, after he was pulled from the ocean.

He was a local doctor.

The shadow was a white shark.

To me, it had been simply a black, silent shape shimmering beneath the blue water.

In Heaven life is always good.

But I thought about the doctor and his death in the jaws of the white shark as I lay awake at night.

I imagined I was him, with the roar of the sky in his ear as he turned his head to take a breath.

And then, what? A violent bump - something wrong! - as he was dragged from his steady progress by a thing more powerful than himself?

Did he feel the sandpaper skin, or see its jaws coming towards him as he looked down his body in motion?

Did the adrenalin hit his heart and numb the pain?

Was he convinced of the goodness of mankind as the fishermen dragged him dying from the water, or was the horror of it all too quick to contemplate?

To observe from heaven is not enough.

I want to know the terror, to taste it.

I want to be that terrible shadow.

In Heaven life is always good.