Widow's Voice

Ahhh…Life….

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I ain’t crazy, like I was beginning to think, and like I so often feel.  I’m just in a new world.  I’m searching for meaning, striving to stitch a new life for myself, stitch my heart and soul into the whole of the Love that he left behind for me.  That’s huge but not in the scheme of time and the Universe….right?  It just feels insurmountable. That doesn’t mean it is insurmountable.

There are no markers for this, are there? How to do this grief. How to find our feet after our special one dies. How to find passion for life again. How to find the energy to do life.

Our loved one dies and there is grief about that, most definitely. Deep devastation has invaded my body in a way that is vastly unfamiliar to me, even having experienced numerous deaths in my life. This is so much more, though, than those deaths. My brother, my mom, close relatives, my dad…take those and add the power of the bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and throw in a whole lot more and it might begin to show the landscape of what this new world is.

We often hear that no grief is grieved of itself; the other people who have died in our lives jump in the coffin with our latest loss. True story, but here’s the thing…

Who I used to be, the woman I was…she’s in that coffin too. The cardboard box that held Chuck’s body, also held me in its’ confines.  Chuck, me, the life we had together…all of it went up in flames when he was cremated.  And I don’t say that in a hopeless manner, but as a simple acknowledgement of the facts.  The woman I was with Chuck for those 24 years, was cremated that day also, and I don’t begin to know the woman who walked out of the mortuary.  Who is this woman now, inhabiting my body?  I am totally unfamiliar to my own self, and that’s disconcerting and unsettling.  Not bad, but very unsettling and I’m grieving her demise as much as my husband’s.  I liked the woman I was with him. I loved that woman.  She was joyous and free-spirited and seized every moment and never took those moments for granted, and she felt so loved.  But she’s gone forever, as much as Chuck is.

This new life is a lonely one and I crave the hugs he gave me, and knowing he had my back, and I crave his kisses.  But that life is sooo gone, and it’s up to me to do this new life.  And I need tools to help me do it.  Hence, the counseling, and the herbal supplements, and my newest; adding EMDR to the menu.  Mostly, I’m going to continue reaching out to my widowed community. You make a world of difference to me, and for me.

I ain’t crazy, like I was beginning to think, and like I so often feel.  I’m just in a new world.  I’m searching for meaning, striving to stitch a new life for myself, stitch my heart and soul into the whole of the Love that he left behind for me.  That’s huge but not in the scheme of time and the Universe….right?  It just feels insurmountable.  That doesn’t mean it is insurmountable.

#Currentlyfiguringthisshitout  #findmeinthecrazyhouse

About Alison Miller

My beloved husband Chuck died while we were full timing on the road. We’d rented a condo for our stay in southern CA, and I had to leave 3 weeks after his death. All I knew at that time was that I had to find a way to continue traveling on my own, because settling down without him made me break into a cold sweat. I knew that the only place I’d find any connection to Chuck again was out on the roads we’d been traveling for our last 4 years together. I knew nobody out on the road, I knew grief was a great isolator, and I knew I had to change the way I traveled without him, to make it more emotionally bearable for me. So I bought a new car, had a shade of pink customized for it, bought a tiny trailer and painted the trim in pink, learned how to tow and camp, and set out alone. My anxiety was through the roof, and all I knew to trust was the Love that Chuck left behind for me. I found Soaring Spirits early on, thank god, and the connections I made through SS helped ground me to some extent. I needed to know that other widow/ers were out there in my world, because I felt so disoriented and dislocated. Through Soaring Spirits, as the miles added up, my rig taking me north, south, east and west, I found community. I found sanity…or at least I learned that if I was bat shit crazy, I was in good company, and realizing that ultimately saved my sanity. PinkMagic, my rig, is covered with hundreds of names of loved ones sent to me by my widowed community, and I know it isn’t visible to the naked eye, but I’ll let you in on a secret…she actually illuminates Love as I drive down the many roads in our country, and I can see it through my side view mirror. Love does, indeed, live on~

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