Widow's Voice

Dusky Nights into Morning~

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I am without him.

I say this without pity.  It’s more of a sense, even these 4 years later, of disbelief.  It’s still surreal. Sometimes I imagine him as a hologram, striding towards me…

Nights are for sleep but they are also when my mind opens up as my body strives to relax past the exhaustion of a day spent being present and open to life. Words swirl up and down and around and memories play relentlessly on the hamster wheel that is my widowed mind.

Words. Phrases. Images. Longing. Yearning. Wishing. Dreaming. Collapsing.

The urn containing what is left of Chuck’s physical self rests next to me on my bed, and his folded flag next to the urn, as I lay down at night in my pink trailer.  There are those who might flinch from lying next to cremains. Am I sleeping with the dead?

My widowed self shrugs and says whatever…

I will never feel his fingers skimming over my body, loving every inch of me, again. His kisses won’t linger on my eyes, on the tip of my nose, or on my lips that ache to breathe his name in response.  I’ll never again see his eyes light with love and passion and teasing as his gaze touches mine. His strong hand will never again enfold mine as we walk, or rest on the small of my back, or reach to open a door for me, smiling as I thank him.

The nevers.

We’re not, in this world of we must always be positive and upbeat and look for the bright spot and the lessons learned and not being given more than we can handle….ever supposed to concentrate on what we don’t have. Only what we do have. We must be grateful for something, no matter what. Anything!

It’s very simple to me.  I’m alive because I haven’t died.  My heart continues to beat somehow. I’ve been told it’s because I still have work to do on this earth.  Fuck that. I’m content with my legacy already.

It isn’t depression.  It’s grieving. It’s loneliness. It’s missingness.  There isn’t a drug out there that can make me not miss Chuck, fix the soul deep aching.  Though I’m also certain that the creators of the DSM bible would likely go into high alert on me, seeing as I’m well past the 6 allowable months for grieving. I believe I’m supposed to be fully engaged in life again, enthusiastically charging headlong into…something.

Fuck that and fuck the DSM.

Chuck…my beloved husband…was in my life, and a part of my life, for 24 intimate, passionate, years. He filled my life with love and passion and knowledge and touch and friendship. He was my go to person, my sounding board, calling me on my shit and cheering me on whenever I needed.  He made me feel safe, he cherished me and made me feel cherished and loved and safe…and he is gone forever.

Fuck that.

It doesn’t comfort me to have only his memory and our memories, but I have to try to find some comfort in that or go crazy.  Memories are all that is left not only of Chuck but of who I was when I was with him.

Thoughts and words and images.  Oh my, do they swirl and dance and dip and sway within me as I lie next to what remains and I remind myself of the Love that is bigger than this devastation because it must be bigger or I must go crazy.  His love for me, and mine for him, was bigger than anything the world can toss my way. Love is bigger than death. I remind myself of that constantly.

But honestly, in the night hours, staring up at the colorful ceiling of my tiny pink trailer, when I am without the warmth of his body next to me, when the morning light peeks under the shade, when my soul says okay here it is, another day without him, time to get up and tackle it…

It takes everything in me to just fucking do it.  One more time.

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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