The Walk I Never Got

Field Notes from the Edge

Journal Entry — Date Unknown

Written during a weekend away, when the silence gave me space to feel. What surfaced wasn’t dramatic — it was quiet, and that’s what made it powerful. This isn’t about a loss in the traditional sense. It’s about the things I never got to live. And the grief of that is real too.

This weekend has stirred something I didn’t expect.

I gave myself permission to breathe — really breathe — for the first time in what feels like years. A sunrise with freshly brewed coffee. A bike ride from Coolum to Noosa, café stops and all. A slow wander through the Mooloolaba Aquarium. No dialysis machines, no timelines, no guilt.

And yet… the grief came anyway.

Not the sharp kind. The quiet kind. The kind that wraps around your chest and whispers, “Look at what you never had.”

Because I realised this:
I never got to walk down the beach, carefree, beside the woman I loved.
I never got to pour a glass of wine, sit on the deck, and just be with her while music played.
I never got to go on a casual ride, holding space without holding pressure.

And I don’t know what to do with that.

I’ve spent so long trying to make sense of the big stuff — the end-of-life support, the systemic betrayals, the collapse of everything I once held steady — that I never let myself grieve the absence of the small. The gentle. The simple.

What does it say when I could carry someone through medical hell, but not carve out one ordinary sunset together?

It makes me question everything. If I couldn’t create that — the basics of joy and companionship — how can I believe I’ll ever build something more meaningful? If I failed at simple, what right do I have to dream of complex?

People tell me I expect too much.
But are these really high expectations?

• A relaxed walk on the beach with someone who chooses me
• A sense of emotional belonging in my own family
• A quiet life that still makes a difference

I don’t think that’s asking the world.
I think that’s asking to live.

What haunts me is that I did the hard thing — I stayed. I cared. I bore witness. I held the line.
But I never got the gentle version.
And it breaks me a little more each time I see others get that without even realising what they have.

If someone were to ask me the one thing I truly desire, it’s this:

A relaxed, carefree walk on the beach with someone who loves me, for the rest of our lives.

That’s all.

Reflection

This grief sits in the quiet places — in the absence of something I never fully held. And that deserves space too. I don’t need to justify it, fix it, or turn it into a lesson. I just need to name it. And keep walking