Widow's Voice

An Odyssey of Love~

| Posted by:

Once upon a time…

A man stole my heart

Right out of my chest.

It’s ok that he stole it,

Because he gave me his in return.

He held my heart so carefully with his two hands.

This man, dressed in the uniform of the US Air Force,

Pledged to Love me, cherish me, honor me,

Til his dying day.

I pledged the same to him,

With all that I was.

We stood with each other for 24 years, side by side, facing the world,

Through blended family, deployments, retirement, unemployment, and multiple deaths in our families.

Our hands clasped, our eyes on each other.

His hand rested on my knee as we drove the country in our last 4 years together.

We loved. We cherished. We lived. We breathed in our time with each other and rejoiced in the strength of our Love and passion.

We held onto each other until April 21, 2013, when he had to leave.

Cancer had done its’ despicable work on his body and he had to let go of life, of us.

I had to stay behind.

Even with the despair, the devastation, the disorientation, the dislocation…all that grief brought with it. I had to stay.

So I took all those d emotions and packed them up into a pink car and a pink trailer and began an Odyssey of Love, living on the strength of his left behind Love.

My last promise to him was that, for the remainder of my life, I’d make sure that every person I met knew his name. Knew what a good and decent and loving man he was to me.

This Saturday evening, April 24, please join me in the online premiere of my documentary “An Odyssey of Love…in pink”. It’s a celebration of the audacity of Love existing beyond time and space. It’s about me and Chuck and the Love story that took me out into the world to create community and connection. It’s about you and your Love story…all of our Love stories. It’s about the fierce power of Love.

Click on this link for tickets and other information~ Online Premiere of “An Odyssey of Love… In Pink” Tickets, Sat, Apr 24, 2021 at 8:00 PM | Eventbrite

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~

TO LEAVE A COMMENT ON A BLOG, sign in to the comments section using your Facebook or Gmail accounts, or sign up for Disqus.