Most weeks, when I write my Wednesday contribution, I have little to no idea of what I might write. What I need to write.
I think, as I start, okay, I’m going to write about this, and I open the document and my fingers still over the keyboard because, nope, that’s not what I need to write about.
I allow my mind to go blank.
I turn on what I call my writing music.
My muse, so to speak.
It’s music that Chuck and I used to listen to. Or music that I’ve discovered since his death, that fills my heart in some way that has no words.
Tears fall. Frequently.
Or I think that I have nothing to say this week. Nothing to offer you.
What is there to say after 5 years of widowhood, right?
In so many ways, for all that I write and speak so openly about this widowhood, about my Love for Chuck, about the Love he left behind…in spite of that, I really have no words. Or I’ve used up all the words, maybe.
So, my mind takes me down that road and tells me that I should stop writing for Soaring Spirits. I have nothing left to offer.
My mind is blank. My fingers pose on the keyboard and nothing comes out.
Like now.
Funny how that happens in the writing process. Which is, I suppose, why experts tell us just get a piece of blank paper and a pen and start.
In this case, and nowadays, a laptop and keyboard.
It isn’t the dark ages, after all.
Words carry power and we, as humans and a society, give that power to them. We give them meaning.
Since Chuck’s death, I tend, now and again, to make up words when I can find no words that fit what I’m trying to convey when I write.
The only word, really, that has any meaning, carries any power, since Chuck’s death, is Love. That word carries in it my past, with him, and these 5 years of living without him, and the community I’ve created around the country. Love is all that carries me through this.
Sometimes…frequently…it’s hard to find Love in this world. I have to dig through all the noise, and that can take some kind of energy, as you all well know.
But, at the end of the day, I’ve always found it, somewhere. I’m developing a totally radical radar for it.
Because, at the end of the day, my very sanity is at stake, to whatever degree I’m still sane. Which, on any given day, is maybe questionable.
This life without him, without his physical presence, which we all know is all that really matters, requires that I seek Love out, every damn day. Or go fucking insane.
Love found me today, in the form of a student here at the Opera camp where I’m working for the summer, who stopped to compliment me on my hat, which is a way over the top straw hat I made, that is crazily decorated with pink flowers and sparkly hummingbirds and pins and feathers and a button with Chuck’s picture on it. She lingered with me for a few, telling me that she reads my posts daily, and my blog, and she loves the way I write about Chuck and our Love story and told me of her still beginning Love story with her husband. And she hugged me twice.
Which is, in my world, huge.
I live for Love.
It’s who I am.
