There is a tattoo of a ship on Sven Vilborg’s right forearm. It is a symbol of his former rebellion, dark and swollen, the color long faded from the schooner’s sails and stern that approximate six inches of his aged skin.

Today, he says, tattoos make some sort of statement. Back then, in the late ’60s, it cost only a dollar or two to get inked in southern Sweden, where Vilborg spent his first 22 years before hopping a Scandinavian shipping boat for a 13-month trip to Tampa, Fla. All sailors had them.

Sailing, like the tattoo, is firmly in Vilborg’s blood — he has spent more than 35 years living the “three on, three off” life of a seaman, working for various cargo and tug boats up and down the East Coast three weeks at a time before taking the same amount of time off.

It was during one of those breaks a month ago that Vilborg approached his wife Michelle about traveling together on a different ship, the Carnival Holiday, for her 50th birthday. They wanted to do something to celebrate the occasion and debated whether to take the trip or to rent a house in Gulf Shores for the week with family.

Hearing Michelle say that she wasn’t sure if she felt like cooking, cleaning or doing laundry all week was all Swede (a longtime nickname and nod to his heritage) needed to hear.

“Cruise it is,” he told her.

The day before the ship was to leave, there were just two cabins left on the Holiday, and the Vilborgs got one with two small beds. Still unsure if they really wanted to take it, Swede checked on canceling the trip. The tickets were non-refundable.

“I said, ‘Guess what, Michelle. We’ve got to go whether you like it or not. We’ll just go and eat and lay by the pool for five days,’” he said.

A chance meeting

New York, New Orleans, San Francisco.

When the Scandinavian ship pulled into Tampa in 1972, U.S. immigration officials offered 22-year-old Swede Vilborg one of three cities where he could travel. Of the three, he knew one was close to Florida. With a couple of friends, he left for New Orleans.

It was there Vilborg spent years working for various ship companies, and it was there he met a young California native and New Orleans resident at an apartment pool party.

He saw her from his ground-floor apartment; her name was Michelle and she was, on the surface, a perfect antithesis to the quiet, rebellious Swede — she countered his reserved nature with an outgoing personality. While he longed for the open sea, she dreamed of grandchildren. He grew up with a large Swedish family; she was born in the backseat of her father’s car in a hospital parking lot in San Diego. It was as if, even from the start, she was anxious to live life.

“I wasn’t looking for no love or nothing like that,” Swede said. “I was just trying to go to a pool party, swim, eat and talk to girls. Anything any guy would have done.”

Still, he was drawn to her. She was infectious, with a big smile and small bathing suit that caught his eye. The first time they spoke, it would be three months until they spoke again. Two years later, in a small ceremony in southern Sweden, they were married.

Their life together was simple, taking them to Stockton, then Bay Minette. Michelle was a homemaker, devoting herself to the couple’s children. She woke them, dressed them, cooked for them and walked them to and from the bus stop. It was all she wanted, Swede said, even when a social security letter told her that the countless hours she devoted to diapers and Disney were worth $175 per month in retirement.

“Nobody cares if you’re the best stay-at-home-mom in the world,” Swede said. “You can bake all the cookies you want and take care of your kids, they don’t pay you for that.”

She was Me-Maw to five current and three future grandkids, roasting marshmallows on a fire and using the fine China to make mud pies in the backyard, each time fully aware the toll it would take on her back when they were finished. It wasn’t uncommon for her to spend days in bed afterward, Swede said. But he couldn’t pull her away.

They escaped together on Swede’s Harley, circling Stockton on weekend road trips that took them past Aikin Creek, the Tensaw tributaries and the First Baptist Church before wrapping past Hartley’s Saw Repair and the tall oaks that trace the entrance to the Presbyterian Church. They rode miles on that motorcycle — packing it with towels for the beach before a stop at the Flora-Bama told them it was time to turn back. They were always home by dinner.

In 2002, the couple’s daughter, Krystal, was killed in a Labor Day car accident in Stockton — a tragedy that shook the family. Then, as always, Michelle was the glue that kept the family together. “She was the positive, I’m the negative,” Swede said. “I don’t know how we got along.”

Swede retired once, about a year ago, before either his love for the ocean or utter boredom — he’s not sure which — drove him back to marine life. Together he and Michelle developed a three-year plan: he would work until he was 62, then retire. They would sell their Bay Minette home and move to a smaller one, maybe on the beach. They would play with their grandchildren. They would ride the motorcycle.

They bought a Mercedes to celebrate the upcoming lifestyle change. Today, it sits in the driveway, driven maybe twice.

Panic sets in

Thirty years on the water has made Swede Vilborg’s senses finely tuned to the workings of a ship. The thousands of hours he has logged sleeping in bunks and hosing off decks has raised his maritime awareness to a high level, and he knew instantly something was wrong when he was jolted awake by the violent shaking of the Holiday, its engines thrust in reverse to stop as quickly as possible in the open sea.

It was almost midnight, June 15, when a passenger reported hearing a splash off the side of the ship, which was positioned about 75 miles southwest of Pensacola. The ship braked immediately and Swede Vilborg, asleep in his cabin, awoke to an empty room. Michelle had been in the bathroom, taking off her makeup and jewelry before hopping in the shower.

She had felt sick earlier and had taken Dramamine to ease her stomach, sleeping away the first afternoon on the trip before waking at 7 before dinner, feeling better.

Jerked awake, he opened his door and saw a mass of people in the long hallway, many walking in and out of cabins. He went back inside and sat on the bed for a few minutes. Then, an announcement: someone was overboard.

“That’s when the panic really set in,” he said. He went out to look for her.

The Holiday’s crew conducted a head count — of the 1,452-passenger capacity, one was missing. One person said he saw a woman in a green shirt and black pants jump over the railing, but the shirt and pants are balled up in Swede Vilborg’s living room, buried under a pile of Michelle’s clothes.

There are equally perplexing theories as to what happened in the 45-minute window Swede Vilborg does not remember, but each is filled with holes and logical missteps that he cannot compute. Mostly, he doesn’t understand why she left the room in the first place, when she couldn’t even find the dining room one floor below them. When he awoke, the water was off and the bathroom towels were dry. Michelle’s key was still inside.

Swede was immediately given a 24-hour security detail, and his ship pass, required to purchase any item on the ship, was taken from him. He was forbidden to consume alcohol and given a new spot to sleep in the crew’s quarters. A doctor on the ship drew two vials of blood; his cell phone, digital camera and Michelle’s wallet were taken — none of which have been returned as of yet.

He would sit for hours inside the quarters, staring at the ceiling and walls while his security guards would stare back. After 2 a.m., when he knew most on the ship had gone to bed, he would turn to his guard and say, “Let’s go for a walk.” Together they would roam the boat in silence, going nowhere in particular for no particular reason other than to just feel movement. He didn’t eat until he got off the boat in Mexico, when three guards escorted him to an airport and watched him get on a plane to Texas.

If Vilborg feels at all victimized by Carnival, he is not alone — Kendall Carver is the president of the International Cruise Victims Association and the father of a missing cruise passenger who was never found. Carver called Vilborg after Swede’s return to Alabama, after two FBI agents sat on his couch and told him his blood should never have been taken and was not needed for the investigation.

“We have all been victims of the cruise line industry,” Carver said. “And when you’re on your own like he was, you think you’re the only guy in the world. There are a world of people out there who have been victims, and all the sudden you’re not alone. You’re part of a group.”

The ICVA’s impact has affected more than just the individual lives of its members; recently, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts authored a bill calling for more accountability in the cruise industry that unanimously passed through the Senate. The bill is needed, Carver says, to corral a billion-dollar industry that is analogous to a resort “that locks you in, pushing alcohol in front of you for five days before pushing you away.”

“I thought it was important to call Swede,” he said. “I think it was a helpful call because all the sudden he realized that there was a whole group of people out there like him. What an impact we are having.

“Swede’s story is not a unique story. It’s a story we hear over and over and over.”

‘My brain is like mashed potatoes’

Today, Swede Vilborg sleeps on a couch. His bedroom door is open, the bed unmade, but he cannot bring himself to sleep there, choosing instead to stare at the ceiling in the family room in the opposite side of his house. He busies himself with menial tasks, expending all his mental energy just to remember how to do laundry and cut grass.

He sees a psychiatrist in Mobile who doesn’t help him much, and he answers phone calls from old friends of Michelle’s; many of whom he says he had never heard of before hearing of their 20-year-long friendships with his wife.

In a way, he has learned a great deal about Michelle since the accident — one day, while looking for the remote control, he opened a drawer and found a small yellow notebook with a flowerpot on the cover. On the inside, scribbled in purple pen were the words “Prayer list.” Pages were filled with names scrawled in Michelle’s handwriting. He had no idea.

Support has flooded in from all sides. The grandmother of Stephen Bond, a 32-year-old Ocean Springs, Miss. man who went missing while on a fishing trip in May, called to talk. His family has flown in from around the country. And his Southern community did what Southern communities most often do, filling his kitchen for days with food.

Still, he struggles with the everyday tasks he most often took for granted, the ones Michelle readily handled while he was “three on” in the waters off New England. He forgets to water plants, to stock the bathrooms and to switch the clothes over.

The loneliness is hard, too. He has, with the help of his children, undertaken a project Michelle desperately wanted, to install laminate flooring throughout his house, but it does little to assuage the aloneness he feels without her.

“My brain is liked mashed potatoes,” he said. “I can’t concentrate. It’s hard to concentrate on the smallest things. Just stuff like washing clothes and folding clothes. I don’t cook anymore. Just small stuff is a major effort.

“I hope one day she’ll just pop in with a big old sun tan and say, ‘I’m home.’ That’d be great, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Everything was geared for him to die, he says. For her to survive. His IRA and 401(k) listed her as the beneficiary, as did his life insurance. Getting them switched to his kids’ names, without a death certificate that may not arrive until September, has proved a hassle.

And yet, amongst the stress and isolation and emptiness that have engulfed Vilborg over the last four weeks, there are moments — little moments — where he finds encouragement.

One came days after he returned from Mexico. Before the trip, Michelle had hidden one of the two keys to the Mercedes S430 without telling him. Without her, he had no idea where the $300 key was hidden. He searched the house, tracing every inch of it with no luck.

One day he walked into a closet, exasperated, to put on his tennis shoes. Out of options, he decided to just ask her.

“Where’d you put the key, Michelle?”

Silence. Then, almost subconsciously, he felt his arm reach above him, to a shoebox on a shelf. He felt around until his fingers traced over the plastic of a black Mercedes key.

“I don’t know if you’d call it a sign or nothing, but I must have passed by the shoe box 15 times," he said.

He knows the truth. Thirty years after she first started, Michelle Vilborg was still helping her husband.