Widow's Voice

Eating my Way Through Widowhood~

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My history with food is not one of gastronomical delights.

Even BCD (Before Chuck’s Death), I had no real care for food.

It was something I ate to keep myself running; I was most definitely not a foodie.

Widowhood struck and my relationship with food became even more tangled.

I distinctly recall, the day after Chuck’s death, grabbing hold of the gym bag where we kept a massive stash of vitamins and vitamin supplements. He took them daily, and would always give a pile to me, each morning. I had no idea what was in the pile; I used to joke with him that he could be feeding me arsenic and I’d never know. But I took them because it made him feel like he was caring for me.

On that day following his death, I took every one of those bottles and flushed the contents down the toilet. Savage feelings of rage overwhelmed me. He’d done everything right, for fuck sake. Eating healthy, taking vitamins, exercising, the whole fucking deal, and he’d gotten cancer and died anyways. Fuck that shit.

And then I went out on the road solo, and my relationship with food worsened. Cook for one? Nope. Cook at all? Absolutely nope. I satisfied myself with cups of yogurt and pb&j sandwiches. For years.

I only recently started taking vitamins again. I don’t necessarily believe they’re doing me any good, but I take them just in case.

I’m in one place during covid. In a house, not my trailer, and I could cook if I want, but I have zero interest in cooking or food, and am still content eating yogurt and sandwiches.

Add in covid, and riots and watching our country destroy itself, and massive fires and all the other disasters currently wreaking havoc on our emotional health…though the fire hornets seem to have taken a detour …and now I think “fuck it. Eat the damn chocolate. Eat that last piece of cake. The world may very well end tomorrow”.

Honestly, part of my thinking, along with the disasters, is that I don’t anticipate ever having another love relationship again, so why care about adding on those pounds? I’m 62, and while that isn’t dead yet, it lessens the chances of finding that one man to make my eyes shine, the one who will love seeing my eyes shine for him. One who will sweep me off my feet. As Chuck did. Yes, I expect that again, if I’m to be in another relationship.

I’m on overload, as so many of us are. Eating crap is the least of my concerns at this point. It really does feel as if we’re living in the end times…and I say that from a completely non religious place.

Every so often I find myself scanning the horizon, looking for Godzilla possibly.

Or winged, horned sharks flying through the air above me.

Possibly the velociraptors from Jurassic Park.

Nothing would shock me anymore, right?

Eat chocolate.

That’s what I have to say for this week’s blog~

 

 

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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