Widow's Voice

Celebrations Realization~

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I spent Mother’s Day with our youngest son and his wife and 2 year old son.

They were loving and lovely and welcoming and it was a totally enjoyable time.

Even as it was heart ripping and filled with emotion because, you know…dead husband.

I’m in year 6 of this widowed life. 

You’d think I would have calmed the fuck down by now, right?

In the years since Chuck’s death, all the special dates are ones that I anticipate, with all the emotions that come with such days, but this past Sunday really brought it home to me that any special day…holidays…are equally tough for me. The days don’t even have to be connected to him, per se. 

The calendar holidays that are popularly celebrated, birthdays of our kids, birth of grandkids…any day that holds emotion either within our family or in the country at large…any day that carries with it an intensity of emotion and expression…

Those days just do me in, emotionally.

In considering that, this past weekend, I realized that it’s because I strive as much as possible to maintain a steady balance in this life that I’ve created for myself. One that doesn’t veer off track much. Maybe I’ve created a bubble for myself, so to speak.

Living without Chuck is already such an intense experience for me that I can too easily go off rail when it comes to any holiday that brings with it the intense outpouring of emotions.

I avoided facebook on Mother’s Day except for a brief check in.

I do the same for all holidays. 

Of course, it isn’t just about me and I fully realize that. Our kids want and need the chance to make that one day extra special for me, and I respect that. They’re good with me all the time but they want to participate, especially, on this one day. Or my birthday. Or the holidays. 

I’m fortunate that they all want me to be a part of their lives. I truly am. And I want to be part of their lives.

It’s just fucking intense, you know? 

It’s such a godawful lonely feeling, being there, without their dad. Without the man I loved. And love.

Jesus. 

When the ever loving fuck is this ever going to change? 

Is it going to change?

I don’t know. I don’t have any answers any longer.

Just intensity. Intensity inside me, ever present. 

His absence humming as the quiet but ever so loud default in my heartbeat.

So I wonder…how are all these special days for you? 

I can’t possibly be the only one who reacts this way.

Right?

 

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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