Widow's Voice

My Newest Math~

| Posted by:

I’m a bit of a fan (hugely so) of the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon, as some of you know. The show and books absorbed me immediately, taking me back to my Scottish roots and filling my world with the Love story between the two characters, Jamie and Claire. The character/personality of the Scotsman, Jamie, reminds me so much of Chuck, and their Love story is so reminiscent of mine with Chuck. Poor Chuck…if he were alive today I’d have him decked out in a kilt on the regular. And I don’t think he’d mind at all.
Anyhoo, the premise of the story is time travel, from modern times (1946 on) backwards to 1743 Scotland. There are so many aspects of the time travel concept that soothe me when it comes to Chuck’s death. So many words pertaining to Jamie and Claire, and their separation through time, that soothe my soul.
I’m not a Christian. I don’t believe in Heaven and I’m uncertain about an afterlife. A particular passage in the second book, Voyager, touched me, however, and gave me pause.
Claire is returning through the stones to modern times, for her safety and the safety of her unborn child. She and Jamie are at the Stones and he says to her that he’ll find her even if he has to wait 200 years.
They’re separated for 20 years, which is when she finds out that he survived the battle of Culloden Moor, and returns back in time to him.
So I think to myself….they had to live 20 years without each other. Maybe I can plant it in my imagination that Chuck has time traveled also. Maybe I’ll see him again after 20 years.
I can do 20 years. I’ve already done 8. That means I only have to do 12 more. If I break that down to half, I only have to do 6. If I break THAT down, I only have to do 3, in order to get to 6, in order to get to 12. I can do that.
My imagination is the primary tool in my tool box, as I live this life without Chuck, and the many secondary losses that come with it, and I activate it into high gear pretty much every day.
As I go past the 7 year mark, this is my new math.
Also, I refuse to go past the 7 year mark.
If I live for another 20 years and someone asks me how long Chuck has been dead, I’ll tell them 7 years, no matter how long it’s been.
My heart is settled into that number as almost bearable to manage, as impossible as it is.
And since in reality I’m coming up on 8 years…if I refuse to count past 7…then somewhere in there is a bonus year.
I don’t get into it too much in my head and I’m not concerned about it making sense to anyone but me.
My heart tells me what I need to know.
Only 3 more years, D, right?
I can do this~

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~

TO LEAVE A COMMENT ON A BLOG, sign in to the comments section using your Facebook or Gmail accounts, or sign up for Disqus.