Widow's Voice

Grace~

| Posted by:

                              http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/20108495_1404276336293963_4957977052603815536_n.jpg

This picture expresses it all for me.

Where I am in this widowed life.

It was taken 3 years ago, but even then, without knowing….I was determined.

Determined that Love must be bigger than the devastation.

Determined that if I knew nothing else, if I remembered nothing else, I would know and remember the Love that Chuck left behind for me.

And it would shine forth from me.

It does. It shines and it shimmers and it glows.

It isn’t any easier for me than it is for anyone else.

What you can’t see in this picture, what is invisible to the human eye and completely visible to my eye, is the humongous shape of Chuck’s absence that is always with me.

His physical and tangible absence to the left of me.

That’s the side he walked on, always, because of deafness in his right ear.

The day this picture was taken, I consciously chose the clothes to wear, wanting to reflect the fucking warrior goddess that I was determined to be.

I chose a clear crystal to wear around my neck, on a strand of pink beads.  Clear crystal, so that the light would shine through. Pink because, well…pink, and Chuck said “wear pink to mourn for me, not black.  Pink suits you better”.

I wore leggings that I laced with pink thread. They were a bit ragged, which suited me.  I was ragged and torn up. I still am.

A lace shirt to remind myself of softness and light.  What I was when Chuck and I were together.

A laced suede vest denoting armor.  Widowhood is not for sissies.  Life is a battle for me, everyday.  I make the decision every day to get up and suit up and show up, and I armor myself in pink, for strength.  For Love.

A sword. But a sword for Love, not violence. A sword because a fucking warrior goddess must have a sword.

I purposefully went barefoot that day, as I crossed streams and climbed red rocks to get to a rise above the earth. I wanted my feet to sink into the ground.  I wanted them dirty and natural and bare.  Bare and as stripped down as I felt.

And, as I posed and lifted my face to the sun above me, I felt, even as my shredded heart beat beneath my lace shirt and suede vest…I felt grace descend upon me. 

Grace.

What I needed then, what I need now, to carry me, along with the Love that is the only real and tangible thing to me in these 4 years and 3 months of withoutness.

I lift my face to the sun, still, and I lift my face to the moon and stars at night, as I travel my Odyssey of Love.  I speak to Chuck and I ask him to send even more Love here to me, more Love to hold onto, more grace to continue on.

Love…the Love that Chuck left behind for me, the Love that I feel for him now and always, is the very breath of my existence. It fuels me, it gets me going, it keeps me going.

I lift my eyes to the skies to absorb Chuck, wherever he is, if he is…and I breathe the Love from him into every step I take, every mile I drive.

It’s all I have.

And it isn’t enough.

Except that..

It is~

 

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.