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In the After~

Posted on: November 23, 2016 | Posted by: Alison Miller

Living in the after

My heart in the before

My passion in the before

Most of me, really, in the before

I don’t know how to be

In this after

I don’t know how to love life

In this after

All of me resides in the before

Because nothing seems to matter

In this after

Memories of Love

Of being held

Lightness of being

Instead of this heaviness

In this after

This low-grade buzz in my

Heart body mind soul

A buzz that aches with remembering

The before

In this after

How does one be

What one was before

In this after?

There is a great and yawning chasm

Between the before and the after

That echoes the great and yawning emptiness

Of my being

In this after

And it is in that emptiness

that who I was who I am who I might be could be don’t want to be but must be

in that emptiness of space and unknowing and missing-ness and uncertainty and dislocation and disorientation and remembering and hurting and wondering and standing still while moving…

There…right there….is where I reside

In this after

So very unlike the before~

Categories: Uncategorized

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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