Widow's Voice

It’s Only Love. Or Grief. Or Love.

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http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_8894.jpgI’m near the end of the first month in the second year since my husband Chuck died.  The nights and the days blend one into the other.  When people ask me how I’m doing, I ask them in return if they want to hear the polite answer or the real answer.  That’s pretty polite of me to ask that of them, isn’t it?

I’ve run out of words to describe how much I miss my husband and how little investment I have in this new life I’m necessarily creating without him.

Whatever.

I’d like to cultivate the mind-set of Walter Mitty, that well-known dreamer.  At any given time during the day or night, I wish I could just let my mind wander to a scenario where I can pretend that Chuck is still with me here.  Just drift away on those thoughts….and live there.

At which point I’d likely be locked up in the psych ward and heavily medicated.  Our culture is very unforgiving of zoning out without medicalizing the situation.  I wonder what the medical term is forI’mlonlierthanI’veeverbeeninmylifeEVERandImissmyhusbandsomuchIcan’tstandit?

I’d so love to be in a world where Chuck is alive with me.  The fact that he isn’t, that he and I are separated from one another forever, makes my breath catch and my pulse race and my heart pound.  Which is, interestingly enough, the way I’d feel whenever he walked into a room and I’d feel his presence.  Or when he’d put his hand behind my neck and pull me in for a knockmysocksoff kiss.

Being in love and being in grief produces the same physical symptoms?  Now there’s a new thought that just popped into my head.  I wonder if any studies have been done about this possible phenomena?

Oh my dear husband, my heart, my lover, my travel buddy, I miss you.

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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