Widow's Voice

Shadow Boxing~

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Caves and shadows and darkness and not being able to see around you.  It could be frightening.  Or it could be maybe okay.

We live in a hurry up culture and we live in a culture where you’re supposed to be happy and positive and everything is feel good.  With an occasional momentary break for a worldwide tragedy but life gets very quickly back on track and the world goes on.  And maybe that’s good and necessary but maybe we need to re-think this happy, happy culture.  Maybe we need to give space to the particular darkness that comes about as people grieve.

My daughter had a conversation with me shortly after Chuck died.  I told her I was just in this dark place and she, very wisely, said that maybe there’s value there in the darkness.  Maybe the shadows and darkness weren’t to be feared.  Maybe beauty could exist in that darkness.

In this past 15 months since he died, (and oh how it freaks me out to write that), I’ve thought often of that conversation and I’ve realized how correct she was.  And is.  With a note that, of course, you can’t live forever in the darkness etc. 

But.

When grief hits, as it will, and that darkness comes, as it does, and we lose our vision, as we do, then maybe, just maybe, our other senses become heightened.  Maybe our hearts see more because our eyes are filled with the veil of tears.  Maybe we trust our instincts more deeply because we know, (or at least I do for me,) that our brains aren’t working as they once did, fogged as they are with grief.   

My eyes don’t see-there is darkness all around.  So I stand still to get my bearings and I listen more acutely.  I wait to feel my feet solidly underneath me before taking a step, my hands out in front of me, searching for something to grasp.  My sense of touch becomes sensitized as I strive to identify my surroundings.  It’s all very tentative and I’m learning to trust my other senses and they become stronger as I rely on them.  When the day comes that I emerge from this darkness, from these shadows of grief, I know I will be deeply aware of myself and life in general because I gave the darkness the time it needed instead of struggling against it and fighting it.

This daughter of mine who is now on the road with me for six months.  She’s pretty damn smart.

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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