“I’ll find a better way
To explain this to you
There are better days
Awaiting, it's true.”
— “Unconditional,” Foo Fighters

I spent some time with all three of my grandchildren last month — watching my oldest grandson play coach pitch baseball in Florence, seeing my granddaughter on the soccer field in Wetumpka, coached by her dad.

Times that remind you that life keeps moving, whether you’re ready for it or not.

After one of Rhys’s baseball games, I noticed something on his right forearm — the number 86.

I asked him why he picked that number.

“I just did,” he said.

I asked my daughter about it — she had written it on his arm before the game. She didn’t know why he wanted it either. He had just asked for it.

But I knew. That number carries a lot of meaning for me.

We graduated in 1986. And in December of that same year, Dorinda and I were married.

This year would have been our 40th anniversary.

Rhys didn’t know any of that.

But standing there, looking at that number written on his arm, I couldn’t help but feel like somehow… he did.

Wayne and Dorinda in 1984, top, and at a Braves game in 2023, bottom.

Photo courtesy of Wayne Smith

LOOKING BACK

On the way home, I took a drive through Prattville just shy of April 25 — the anniversary of Dorinda’s passing.

I went by our former house and sat there for a while, letting the memories come. They’re all still there.

I tried to focus on the happy ones instead of the cancer — pushing Rhys around the neighborhood in his Little Tykes car so many times. Dorinda picking up him and Ann Evelyn, our granddaughter, after pre-school and watching them play together through the afternoon. Just simple days that I’d give anything for now. I knew they were special. I just didn’t realize how special.

From there, I drove to Central Alabama Radiation Oncology, the place I took her for so many of those treatments. I sat in the parking lot and just looked at the building — one I had followed her into more than three dozen times.

I always thought she was going to get better. Always.

It’s hard to believe a year has passed. It’s been a difficult year, with many dark days. There have been high points — time with my grandchildren, moments that remind me how much life still moves forward. But even in those moments, there’s always that quiet thought: she should be here for this. She would have loved it.

That hasn’t been easy.

One of the ways I’ve worked through this past year is through writing — these columns for Gulf Coast Media and The Baldwin Times, and significantly, a book I’m working on. It started as a story about my dad and his life before I knew him, as a young sailor in the Navy during World War II. But along the way, it’s become something more. It’s a story about where we come from, the people who shape us, and the ones we carry with us even after they’re gone. I’m hoping to finish it this summer, and if you’ve connected with these columns, I think you’ll recognize that same voice in the book.

That search has taken me from the Alabama coast back to North Alabama, to his hometown of Anderson. It’s taken me into old records and family history. And soon, it will take me to Seattle and Bremerton, Washington, where he was hospitalized near the end of the war. I wanted to follow in his footsteps as much as possible.

Wayne’s grandson, Rhys, shows the number 86 written on his forearm.

Photo courtesy of Wayne Smith

There have been visits to the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, where the archivist there was of great help in my research of my dad’s ship, the USS Idaho. There was a visit to the USS Alabama on a cold January morning — as close to walking through the Idaho as I could come in seeing what his life would have been like during the war.

But more than about war, the book became something more personal — about life, love and loss, and moving forward. If my dad is the engine of the book, and I’m the narrator, then Dorinda is its heart.

The early morning hours have been the hardest since losing her. Waking up and realizing she’s not there — that’s a feeling that hasn’t gone away.

For a long time, I was stuck in that space. But something shifted late last year.

In December, I heard a sermon about a farmer who sold everything in search of wealth, only to learn that the land he had been standing on all along held one of the richest diamond deposits in the world.

The message was simple: sometimes you don’t need to go searching. Sometimes you just need to look down and realize what’s already there.

The next day, a friend who does a lot of military history research sent me naval records from my dad’s service — completely out of the blue.

That felt like a nudge.

And from there, something else started to happen. In those early mornings, when the weight felt the heaviest, I’d feel that same quiet push:

Let’s go to the beach.

Let’s write.

Don’t stay stuck.

So I didn’t.

Over the last few months, I’ve poured myself into the book, following that path wherever it’s led. …

LOOKING AHEAD

On the morning of April 25, a small group of friends gathered with me on the beach at sunrise. Cowboy Johnson played three acoustic songs. Nothing formal — just time to remember, and to reflect on a year that has felt both long and short at the same time. I appreciate my new friends in the area who took a few minutes to attend and watch the sunrise with me.

Susan Blackwell said a few words. Jim Watson read “The Ship” by Bishop Charles Henry Brent — words that say it better than I can:

“And just at the moment when someone says, ‘There, she is gone,’ there are other eyes watching her coming… and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, ‘Here she comes!’”

My Gulf Coast friends, along with my two children and several others, have helped pick me up during this past year. They remind me that there are better days ahead. To get up, to get out.

And to keep moving forward.

Wayne Smith has worked as a writer and editor at newspapers across Alabama, Florida and South Carolina. His weekly column focuses on navigating Gulf Shores alone after losing his wife to cancer, and the places he discovers and the people he meets. Read his previous columns at www.GulfCoastMedia.com. Contact him at wwsmith6410@gmail.com.

The author gathers with friends at sunrise on April 25 to remember Dorinda and reflect one year later.

Photo courtesy of Susan Blackwell