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In "Once More to the Lake," what causes the reference to the chill of death in the last paragraph?
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The "chill of death" in the last paragraph of "Once More to the Lake" symbolizes White's realization of his own mortality. This sensation occurs when his son winces from the cold of wet bathing trunks, reminding White of the passage of time and the life cycle he is part of. As he recalls childhood summers at the lake with his father, he faces the inevitability of his own demise.
In this essay, White returns many years later to the same lake in Maine he traveled to as a child with his father in 1904. White's essay explores the complex and troubling series of emotions this journey elicits in him.
At the end of the essay, as White watches, his son, who is insisting on swimming in the lake, pulls down an icy cold, soggy set of bathing trunks from the line and winces as he puts them. At this moment, White feels a chill himself in his groin that seems to mirror his son's chill. However, White's own chill is metaphoric, not literal. It represents his realization of his own mortality.
In the essay, White superimposes his own memories of being a boy at the same lake with his own father over his current experiences as now the father of a boy about the same age he was...
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when he first came here. His feelings are extraordinarily bittersweet rather than simply sentimentally nostalgic. This is because White acutely realizes what the passage of time means. His own father is dead, and now he is in his father's shoes. This means he is that much closer to his own death, a painful emotion that hits him fully as he realizes he is no longer the young boy his son still is. In his son, and in the passage of time, White comes face to face with the unsettling inevitability of his own demise.
The "chill of death" is White's realization of his own mortality. It was brought on, initially, by an afternoon thunderstorm at the lake to which he has brought his son, the same lake White had vacationed as a child. The storm reminds White of a similar one he had seen as a child. Thunderstorms over a lake "had not changed in any important respect," he writes. "This was the big scene, still the big scene."
After the darkness of the thunder and lightning, White notes that children still run outside to swim in the rain, "the return of light and hope and spirits." He calls it a melodrama, and notes that the cycle of storm and calm, darkness and hope, goes on eternally. As he watches his son change into his bathing suit to join the other swimmers, he sees the son wince when the still-wet suit touches his groin. This reminds that author that the cycles of nature applies to him, too. Just as his father brought him here, watched White experience a thunderstorm, and then passed on, White realizes he is part of the same cycle and must eventually face the same end. This causes a physical sensation—the "chill of death."