He missed the days of when she walked beside him. The path always seemed welcoming, inviting, when it was the two of them. The morning air didn’t have as much bite and the ocean didn’t seem as ominous when she held his hand. The days where gone after the doctor said the damage was more than could be fixed.

One car accident, one mistake, that’s all it took to steal her freedom. She was wild, always had been, but her mind was crippled and her will with it. He huffed out a hot breath watching it mix with the cold. He couldn’t help but blame himself, he wasn’t the one drinking, that was the other driver, but had he let her drive their story would be different.

Thirty years of marriage, of working together to make this journey last, now he felt alone. How could you grieve someone still living? How could you mourn if you still kiss them every night? Everyone told him how lucky he was she was alive, but no one saw that something else died.

He looked out onto the icy waves, he lost the woman he married. The woman who would meet you head to head if she knew she was right. He lost the woman who danced barefoot while she wrestled bread dough. He lost the woman who looked at him and made him a hero everyday. That woman died.

That was why he was grieving. He was missing the woman who made him feel alive, the one who made him bend the rules, who made him step out of his comfort zone.

As he stared at the waves one thought made him happy, and that was that that woman did not know what she would become. If she knew what would have happened she would have been heart broken. To lose a life of adventure and know would have wounded her more than for it to just happen.

The fog gathered as the air began to warm and mix with the cold of the sea. He smiled a broken kind of smile, one where he knew his love was not lost, but forever changed. The seagulls began to call to one another as the morning started.

He turned on his heels beginning the trek back to the house to see his beautiful bride and tell her what the walk was like today. If she couldn’t see it, perhaps he could describe it. After all sight is not everything, love is.