Widow's Voice

It Starts Soon

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http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/IMG_1782.jpgI watched a documentary last night about Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn.  Pretty heavy watching, you might think, and you’d be right for so many reasons. 

My husband and I shared a love for American history and traveled to so many National Parks over the 4 years we traveled as Happily Homeless.  Little Bighorn in Montana was a powerful place for us both and we carried away intense memories from our time there.

My ears perked up when the documentary discussed the wives at Ft Lincoln waiting for news of their husbands, not knowing that the battle had ended and all the soldiers had died.  Elizabeth Custer, George’s wife, wrote a letter in which she spoke about the “unendurable yearning” of each of the wives for their husbands.

Those are the words I remember from the documentary.  Unendurable yearning.

I’d say that pretty much describes my heart and soul and body since Chuck died.

My daughter Rachael-Grace and I, in our 6 month Nothin’ But Love tour, will go to Little Bighorn.  It was one of the places my husband asked me to re-visit to scatter his cremains.  The geography of that area is wide-open, the skies are endless, and we’ll find a place away from people to remember and honor him.

There is so much grief and emotion in me as I contemplate this next part of my travels that I’ve gone numb.  You probably know that feeling yourself.  How much pain and grief can a body sustain before it goes numb with that pain?

This 6 month trip will take me headlong into my grief, on roads he and I drove, all over the US.  Along the way, Rae and I will, I’m certain, be astounded and awed and left in wonder at the power of this love he left behind for us.

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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