Widow's Voice

Signs. Believing and…Not~

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Chuck used to say to me Miller, get out of your head. You think too much.

I still think too much.  And you know what I think about most often? Signs. Those signs that we look for after our dearly loved one dies.  The signs that everyone assures us are messages from our loved ones.

In my head I can totally make logic of many of the signs that, if I believed in such things, have occurred and I could convince myself that Chuck sent them.  Two years on the road solo with unexpected meetings with people who show me things and tell me things that could only be from Chuck. If I believed in such things. And I do want to believe in them. I want to see them and know them and be reassured that he is somehow still around me.

Our youngest son got married this past weekend and they hired a DJ for the reception. My son-in-law brought to my attention the car driven by the DJ, which was parked in the drive. It was the same model/make  and color of the car Chuck and I drove our last 4 years. It had a roof rack and sun roof, as ours had. And the license plate? It read Chuck. Which was the DJ”s name.

What are the odds on that? The likelihood? Everyone immediately believed, of course, that it was something from my husband, striving to reassure me that he’s near, that he was there on a day that was joyous and yet filled with the gaping hole of his absence. And I wanted, and want still, to believe that it was him. I envy those who believe so surely in signs. But then my brain kicks in.

Are we the creators of these connections? Do we take what is not really anything but ordinary circumstances and make them into something that brings us comfort? Are we the ones who give meaning when it means nothing really? And ultimately does it matter as long as it brings us comfort?

These thoughts that run through my head constantly as people point these signs out to me… and it isn’t that I disbelieve them. It’s simply that I get in my head and argue about it and go back and forth and it gets me crazy and I end up back at square one.

My bottom line thoughts on signs, for me, are this: even if they are signs from Chuck, it isn’t good enough for me. I don’t want the signs. I want him. There’s pretty much no grey area for me in this. He’s gone and I can’t have him, of course, and my brain won’t accept second best as a substitute.  

Grief. It’s confusing to me at best and this is just one of the ways that gets me nuts. I don’t know what to think except that I need to stop thinking and let things just be. Which I’ve never been good at doing and I’m worse at it now that the stakes are so high.

Round and round my brain goes. I want to accept these things as signs. Truly. Why can’t I just let it be and find comfort in it?

                                        

 

 

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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