When I’m Gone: A song comes back around
- wwsmith6410
- Mar 15
- 3 min read
The photo still makes me smile every time I see it.
Dorinda sitting beside our grandson Rhys, then 2, at a 3 Doors Down concert at The Wharf in Orange Beach in August 2023. Rhys had oversized headphones on to protect his ears while Dorinda sang along to one of her favorite songs by the band — When I’m Gone.
I even captured a short video of her singing it that night.
Dorinda sings along to “When I’m Gone” by 3 Doors Down while sitting beside our grandson Rhys at The Wharf Amphitheater in Orange Beach, August 2023. Rhys wore headphones to protect his ears during the show. (Video by Wayne Smith)
Saturday night, in the courtyard of a small Orange Beach restaurant, a Gulf Coast band unexpectedly started playing that same song.
And suddenly that summer night came rushing back.
The funny thing is, I never planned to be there.
Around 2 o’clock Saturday afternoon a friend mentioned a Pensacola-based band called Riptide playing in Orange Beach. “They rock,” he told me. “You’d like them.”
As it turned out, he couldn’t even make it that night. But the suggestion stuck with me.
So I went anyway and met another friend there.
It turned into one of those simple evenings you don’t plan — the kind that somehow feel meant to happen.
The band was playing in the courtyard of the Angry Crab Shack. Families and friends gathered around tables while the band ran through a set filled with the kind of guitar-driven rock many of us grew up on.
Riptide’s lineup includes two fathers and their sons, along with a drummer — a family dynamic that somehow felt fitting for the night.
Then the band launched into a familiar opening riff.
When I’m Gone.
The song by 3 Doors Down. The Mississippi band actually got its name during a trip through nearby Foley, when the original three members noticed a building with letters missing from its sign that read “Doors Down.”
Riptide performs “When I’m Gone” by 3 Doors Down in the courtyard of the Angry Crab Shack in Orange Beach on March 14, 2026. (Video by Wayne Smith)
For a moment I just stood and listened.
Released in 2002 and one of the band’s biggest hits, the song carries a little extra poignancy these days. 3 Doors Down lead singer Brad Arnold died of cancer in February.
Hearing the song again in the same beach town where Dorinda once sang along to it brought everything rushing back.
Later, after the music had ended, my friend introduced me to a couple standing nearby.
The woman shared something that immediately caught my attention: she had survived breast cancer. At one point doctors had given her only months to live.
Yet years later, she was still here telling her story. I will write more about her another time.
As she talked, the conversation turned emotional. At one point we found ourselves standing there with tears in our eyes, hugging like old friends.
Dorinda wasn’t one of the lucky ones.
But hearing a survivor tell her story felt like a reminder that every life touched by cancer carries its own path — some filled with loss, others with survival.
Earlier that morning, around 3 a.m., sleep wouldn’t come. That’s normally the case for me. My mind kept drifting toward the calendar and the approaching date of April 25 — the anniversary of the day cancer took Dorinda from us last year.
Later that morning I updated my Facebook profile picture — one of my favorite photos of the two of us from St. Augustine Beach in 2019.
Grief has a way of showing up like that, especially as certain dates approach.
But somewhere along the way Saturday, the day changed.
A random suggestion from a friend.
A local band playing rock songs in a courtyard.
A familiar song drifting through the air.
A conversation with a cancer survivor.
And the memory of Dorinda singing beside our grandson on a summer night in Orange Beach.
By the time I drove home, the whole evening felt like one of those quiet little gifts life sometimes hands you when you least expect it.
Maybe it was coincidence. One good friend doesn’t believe in coincidences. She sees them as clear signs. So do I.
And maybe this sign was just Dorinda’s way of nudging me out the door and reminding me that life — even with the scars grief leaves behind — still has moments waiting to be lived.
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