Hats and Hungry Seas

You throw something out onto the sea. I don't know what - it doesn't really matter - but it's not a message in a bottle, because you expect to get nothing back. At first whatever you have thrown out onto the sea - lets pretend it's a straw hat (because I nearly lost one in the sea when I was an infant) - stays near you. It's almost like it's still with you. You can reach out and touch it, pick it up if you want to. You don't though. you watch it on the swell, on the up-and-down tides. It gets further out. You can't reach it any more - but even if you can't touch, it's still comforting to know it's still there. You watch the hat bobbing up and down, rain or sun, it doesn't matter, wild or calm, it's still there. It gets further and further away - nearly gone now! -  the inevitable approaches. You begin to feel uneasy.You know what will happen. You still see that hat though - just - still there, till one time you look, and, yes, the hat is gone. All that's left is the sea and those tides and the current that has swallowed everything.