Widow's Voice

And Then There was Love

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I’m almost in Tampa for Camp Widow, arriving early from Arizona.  This has been a long road trip for me, and taxing in a different way from my previous travels, emotionally.  Perhaps it’s the knowing that this really will be for me, as so many have assured me, a life-changing weekend.  This grief is exhausting and I want it to shift for me but at the same time, being honest, I suppose deep in there somewhere is fear also.  Fear that it will be so life-changing for me that I won’t recognize myself afterwards.  Not that I recognize myself now.  All I know is that I’m not the woman I was with Chuck.  Everything else is up for grabs.

http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/sss10649826_10203576907175805_5053873018434830644_n.jpgWhat has made this trip more bearable for me, winding my way along the southern route in my PinkMagic rig, are the people who have reached out to me.  Prior to leaving, I’d mapped out my route and marked the military bases where I would find a site to set up for quick overnights.  That isn’t what has happened, however.

One of the groups to which I belong is called Sisters on the Fly;  it’s made up of women around the country who own vintage trailers and meet up for camping and other fun activities.  So before I left I posted about my trip and the reason for it on our page.  And I hadn’t even reached Texas when Sisters began contacting me, inviting me to come overnight with them, to either curb with them (which means to have hook-up for my trailer in their yards), or to stay in their guest rooms.  And once that got going, more and more sisters joined in from the states along the way:  Texas, Louisiana, Florida…single women, married, divorced, widowed;  they have all reached out to cheer me on my way.  They have loved me through these miles and so even in the midst of all this grief, there is a strong sense of being blessed.  We’ve shared stories of cancer and love and grief and family and strength and joy and connected through tears and laughter and hugs.

I’m not the same woman I was with Chuck and I worry sometimes that he might now know me were he able to come back to me.  But then I think, oh, yes, he’d know me in a way that he knew me for 24 years.  He knew me better than I know myself and that’s why he set me on this Odyssey of Love in the first place.  There was no way for him to tell how it would play out, but he damn well knew (because he loved me so), that this is exactly how I’d create a new life without him. 

I have no idea when this Odyssey will be done and I don’t even think about it.  All I know is that I’m on my way to Tampa and Camp Widow and that I have been embraced and supported along the way and…period. 

Grief and Love and, oh yes, PinkMagic as my chariot~

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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