Widow's Voice

Grief Rising. But Love, Too

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http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/10440647_685923371462600_8334835858927526831_n.jpgTomorrow my daughter Rachael-Grace and I leave on our 6 month Nothin’ But Love tour.  It will be quite an experience for both of us, filled with every emotion of the alphabet as we honor and remember my husband/her dad, meet people along the way and hear their stories, offer workshops to women around the country and, well, who knows what else. 

Someone used the word vacation to describe what we’re doing.  As in, my daughter and I are going on a 6 month vacation.  There have been other people (not many, thank goodness) who, upon my arrival here in Phoenix, asked me if I’d enjoyed my travels from the East coast.

Hmmmm…..

All of them know my husband died recently.  Did I enjoy my travels from the East coast?  Maybe not so much, what with the urn with his cremains riding shotgun with me, his folded flag draped with his ID tags hanging on it.  Maybe not so much as I drove the roads he and I drove for 4 years together, the grief ripping through me with every mile.  Struggling to breathe through it.

Going on vacation?  Seriously?  This entire Odyssey is about fulfilling Chuck’s last request to me.  He mentioned 3 places to visit and knew I’d know the rest of them.  That final request of his is the primary purpose of my life now.  Its the driving force behind what my daughter and I are doing.  Possibly (do you think?) it will be emotional.

Along the way, we’ll also deepen our mom and daughter relationship.  Rachael is a hoop dancer and yoga instructor and we’ll do that each morning to help work out thebeinginthecar kinks and to move the grief energy around.  I’m sure we’ll smile and laugh along with the tears.  That’s how grief is, isn’t it?

But vacation?  No, I don’t think so.  Every moment of this next 6 months is going to be intense in every way.  Light and darkness and shadows and love and more love.

Today she and I went out to the desert with her husband and my son to take pictures and shoot some video.   My grief spilled out and my heart poured blood in the process.  Which is okay, in the midst of not being okay because nothing really is okay and I’m kind of okay with that. 

Tomorrow is the day we commence this Odyssey of Love.  Grief.  Love.  Magic.  And the open road.

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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