Widow's Voice

My Brain as a Treadmill~

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I’m grateful I have this spot to write out my thoughts, to think out my thoughts and, maybe at times, make sense of my thoughts.

More often than not, it seems that I am incapable of writing in prose here.  Sometimes just listing the idle thoughts that run through my brain comes more easily.

Every part of me is exhausted this week.  More than the usual exhaustion, I mean.

This is the treadmill of my brain:

I think I’ve become a loner.  Even and in spite of loving to relate to people I meet on the road and one on one, I generally don’t do well now in crowds.  I used to.  Crowds of people energized me.  Now, unless I’m speaking of deeply philosophical topics, or life on the road, or my Odyssey, I just don’t seem to have much to say.  Which makes me feel as if I’m being rude but I just don’t have small talk in me.  Me, a loner…that would have made me laugh in my life prior to Chuck’s death.

My ex died day before yesterday and I don’t know how to react.  It’s very confusing and odd and weird.  Not because I’m grieving him or because I haven’t dealt with the shit that happened while we were married over 30 years ago, but because his death makes me miss Chuck even more. 

It took intense work from me, after my divorce, to deal with all the emotions borne of living in an alcoholic, abusive marriage, but I did.  And then I found Chuck and it took me a couple years before I learned to trust that he was there to stay. 

The darkness of being married to my ex was in stark contrast to the lightness of my marriage to Chuck. In a way that I struggle to explain, that’s where my grief is now, regarding my ex.  Remembering back to the life I shared with him for 10 years and the 24 years I shared with Chuck…the man who brought so much to my life and made me feel so cherished…it hits me harder than ever that what I had is so gone.

Life is filled with contrasts.  My ex was an alcoholic who chose not to get sober.  Chuck was an alcoholic who chose to get sober and live sober.  The first leaves behind so much confusion and uncertainty.  The second left behind so much love and grace.

And yet…both of the men who were in my life really, in one way, left Love behind, because it lives on in the kids they both created.  My ex…maybe he was on this earth for the sole reason of giving life to a daughter and 2 sons.  Maybe that is all he was here to do.  And it was up to the second man, to my husband, Chuck, to find us and marry me and raise my 3 with me, to be the fine young people they are. 

Life is hard, isn’t it?  It can strike us out of left field like a sledge hammer and leave us gasping for breath.

I wish Chuck was here to help me with this.  Not only with the kids, but to give me a sounding board to figure out my own confusion.

Fuck and fuck and fuck again~

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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