Widow's Voice

Sublime and Surreal~

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My brain and body…both are too tired to string together too many sentences.

I say too tired, but it isn’t from tiredness really, as much as it is a whole lot of stimulation in the past few days. 

My mom used to say that stress happens with good and bad things both. That our body feels it as stress whatever it is.

This has been good stress in the last few days. Also, hugely emotional.

 

Chuck died April 21, 2013.

I set out on the road in my pink car, towing my pink trimmed trailer, on my Odyssey of Love, just a few months later, and it’s now 6.5 years later.

Last weekend I went on location to northern Arizona and Zion National Park in Utah, to begin filming a documentary about my Odyssey of Love that I’ll take out om the road, possibly by this summer.

It was surreal being on location. Completely and utterly surreal.

How is it possible that I’m doing something like this? Seriously.

I determined, this past April 21, which is always my New Year, that the time had come to do this, and fully committed to spending every last dime I have in the pursuit of doing so, because it’s time.

At different points, as we were filming, and discussing future marketing, and fundraising, my first thought was ohmygodhowamIevergoingtodothis? How will I ever figure out fundraising and marketing and venues and everything involved in this? I don’t know how to do any of what must be done.

That thought was quickly followed by shit…you didn’t know how to do any of this when you began. You didn’t know to do life without Chuck when he died at 11:21 on April 21, 2013. You didn’t know how to tow or camp or create a community for yourself. You were riddled with anxiety. 

And the way I’ve done all that I’ve done is by suiting up and showing up, keeping my heart open to Love, allowing myself to stay vulnerable, with a willingness to do the footwork.

So I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing. 

My heart hasn’t led me wrong yet.

Life is surreal since Chuck’s death, in every way, on so many levels. Filming this documentary is just another degree of surreal.

And I’ve got to tell you, this documentary…a Loveumentary as I’m calling it…well, all I can say is I saw some of our footage that we filmed, with the drone flying overhead as my rig, PinkMagic, flew down the road…it was fucking awesome. Fucking awesome.

I’m imagining Chuck’s reaction if he knew I was doing this.

He’d be smiling ear to ear. Not at all surprised, either. 

Just smiling because he knew I’d do something with all this devastation…

And I am~

 

 

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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