Mitchell, a deacon in his church, went to the Sunday school class he taught the next weekend and asked his students if they could imagine dying for the person they loved.

“I have to tell you there were mixed emotions because no one can possibly know how they would react in that moment,” he said. “Danny wasn’t a very good swimmer, but he jumped right in when she called because that’s who he was, and that’s how much he loved her.”

In the hours after the drowning, the coroner told Bernie that Dan’s death had to have happened quickly. There was no stress on his face. A bruise on his head suggested he had hit it on the rocks when engulfed by a wave.

She returned to Atlanta two days later, overwhelmed and unable to retell the story in excruciating detail. There was one call she had to make, however. It was to Nicole Brandt, who had left her number with Bernie before leaving the beach.

“I just want to say thank you for what you did,” Bernie told her. Over the course of the year they have maintained a connection — exchanging calls, checking in on each other.

But rather than dwell on the complexity of her husband’s ultimate sacrifice, Bernie has preferred to recall “the little things you don’t always think about, the small gestures.” She added: “Danny was the kind of person who didn’t take those things for granted. He liked the simple things: staying home, being with his family, playing with his grandkids.”

A new town house she recently downsized to has been decorated with mementos of a distant basketball career, with photographs of Dan in action in various uniforms. But the visual she believes best captured Dan’s essence was taken just before their last trip to Aruba and stored in her smartphone.

In a brief video, two young boys are dribbling and shooting basketballs at a toy backboard and rim outside the Roundfields’ home. Their bespectacled, graying grandfather trails after them. He is tall, smiling and eternally watchful.