Widow's Voice

Shape-Shifting

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This confusing, weird, strange, life as a widow.

I’ve stored PinkMagic for a couple of months while I’m here in Arizona, while I take a break from the road to write my book and rest a bit.  While I’m here, I’m staying with my son and his wife and family, which is wonderful and I know that they’re happy to have me but…my mind….oh, my mind and where it goes as I figure this crap out.

For 24 years my life was my husband.  I adored him, I was in love with him.  Together he and I lit our world on fire and I felt fulfilled and useful and our life was one of adventure and excitement in so many ways.  I loved being his wife.  I felt sensual with him.  There was a vibrancy and electricity as we moved and touched one another that energized me daily.  It was physical, it was emotional, it was spiritual.

Who the fuck am I now?  This image of myself that I see in the mirror lacks…everything that used to be and I don’t/can’t see what is there now.  I feel genderless, honestly.  My body was accustomed to his touch, his lovemaking, our bodies moving together in passion.  I miss that dreadfully.  My eyes oh my eyes where did the sparkle and flash go?  All I can see in them now is dreadful sorrow and stillness and confusion.  Such confusion.  What is my role now?  Where do I belong when home was a person and that person is dead?  I don’t say any of this in self-pity (and I feel I have to add that because sometimes it seems that people make that judgement). It’s more about shock, I think.

I still keep my right hand empty when I walk.  Old habit.  Maybe I’ll feel him take it in his again one day.

Sometimes I turn on the music Chuck and I would dance to, and put my right hand out, and my left as if resting on his shoulder, and I dance with him again.  Ghost dancing I call it.

At night I reach out for him next to me.  I hate the emptiness that I find.

When will I again feel like a woman?  When will I figure any of this out?  Will I ever feel passion of any kind again?  Will a man ever kiss me again and, if that happens, will it kill me from wanting him to be Chuck?

Fucking widowhood~ 

 

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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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