A year ago: A memorable beach day
- wwsmith6410
- Mar 7
- 3 min read
(First appeared in the Baldwin Times for Gulf Coast Media, March 6, 2026)
By Wayne Smith
Gulf Shores Media Contributor
“You belong among the wildflowers. You belong in a boat out at sea … You belong somewhere you feel free.”— Tom Petty, Wildflowers
I spent most of the last week of February in North Alabama. I was there working on my future and looking back on my past.
I’ll explain that later.
But thinking about the trip on my way back to my new home here, maybe I was there ahead of the beginning of March, my own Ides of March in a way. That’s because March 2 marched the one-year anniversary of my last day at the beach with Dorinda. Our last beach photo together — the last one of no telling how many images of her smiling, enjoying the sun in the sand collected over nearly 40 years.
She was sick, yes, but I never imagined March 2, 2025, would be the last time we’d sit together along the shoreline. That’s because I always thought my wife would get better, would overcome the cancer. She did not.
But on that day — capping a long weekend in Gulf Shores — we just enjoyed the day together. It was a bit chilly for a beach day. She wore her pink hoodie; I had on a pullover. I don’t remember a lot about what was said. Maybe we talked about some moving plans. We read. Napped. And I was with her.
We had lunch at the Pink Pony Pub, one of our regular stops when on a beach outing. I snapped a few pictures of us. And looking back at those images on my phone, the last picture I took that day was as the sun was beginning to set. There’s no telling how many pictures I’ve taken of the sun since that day a year ago — sunrises and sunsets.
Maybe it’s because I see her in them.
That last beach day wrapped up a weekend trip where we discussed plans for moving here full time. We brought a measuring tape, figuring out the feet and inches we had to work with inside our condo for furniture pieces we wanted to bring south from our home in Prattville.
There would be room for our kitchen table and matching buffet, a set she picked out in 2019 and one we wanted to keep. We measured for a few other pieces of furniture, jotting down the space we had available. It was a good weekend. She felt good.
We fully expected to return together in May, realizing a longtime dream of relocating at the beach. But then came April.
After fighting cancer for 14 months, April proved to be the final round.
We didn’t get to sit on the beach together again.
The week in North Alabama was spent doing some research for a project I’m working on about my dad — visiting the place where he grew up and learning more about the Smith family.
Along the way I’ve uncovered old photos — some I’ve never seen of family members — thanks to an older cousin.
And then came some other boxes in storage and going through photos of my own family — Dorinda, our children and us BC, as Bear called it — Before Children. One photo in particular, of Dorinda, found its way into a frame immediately. It’s now among my most-prized possessions.
For my future, writing about her helps, and it’s been the foundation for the broader writing project that led me home last week — to the original Smith homeplace in Anderson. I’ll share more on that another time. But Dorinda is the guidepost for that project.
Ahead of my visit to Anderson, a friend sent me a Facebook meme he had seen and said he thought of me. Basically, it said that when we post on social media about a loved one we’ve lost, it’s not because we’re looking for sympathy.
It is to keep their memory alive.
That’s why words matter more now. Pictures, too.
Like the last one of us on the beach together.
A year ago.
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 on www.GulfCoastMedia.com.
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