Widow's Voice

Rhetorical Questions of the Night~

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I ponder these questions in the darkness of my sleepless nights, not expecting any answers, but wondering, always, knowing I’m not alone in thinking these questions, and knowing, too, that any answers can take a lifetime~

Where is Chuck?

Is there an afterlife?

How can I have believed so strongly in an afterlife of some sort, but, the minute Chuck died, those beliefs disappeared?

Love left behind beats strongly in my heart, but how will that be enough to sustain me for a lifetime without him?

How do I find passion for life again?

What do I think about the fact that I was already fully aware of how fortunate I was to have Chuck, to have the life I did, that I was already compassionate and empathetic, and didn’t need him to die to wake me up?

Is there a God?

I read sometimes that it is fear that keeps us from living or again.  What if it isn’t fear at all, but more of an I just don’t give a fuck if I live?

What if it isn’t fear that keeps me from loving again, just a total lack of understanding the concept that it CAN happen again, with a man who is as wonderful as Chuck was?

What if I never have wild and crazy sex again?

Isn’t it funny how there are some people who insist that I’ve put Chuck on a pedestal because he’s dead because that’s, apparently, what grieving people do when our loved ones die, when anyone who knows me knows that I spoke about him the same way when he was alive?

How is it that I haven’t died of a broken heart in these 3 years since Chuck died?  Is there a better candidate for a broken heart than this heart that inhabits my chest? 

Does anyone else feel an actual physical ache from not being hugged by your husband/wife?

Does this awful ache and emptiness only go away if we find someone to love, and be loved by, again?

Do we get more than one real love story in a lifetime?

How do you not compare one man to another, if the situation came up that another man comes into my life?

How on earth could I ever find a man who has the confidence Chuck had, who lived a conscious life, who was the lover he was, who would cherish me as he did?

How have I lived for 1,142 days/22hours/30minutes, and 4seconds, without him?

How do I live the rest of my life without him?

These questions, and more, keep me company at night.  What are your questions, I wonder?

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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