Widow's Voice

The Never Ending Story

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Is loneliness the never-ending story of widowhood?

Does it end if we find another chance at Love?

Does the loneliness exist, even then

Because the loneliness is specific to that person, your person, who died?

Is there ever a moment again

When a widow’s heart feels that lightness of being,

Once felt?

Or is the heaviness, the ache, the sadness of that particular loneliness

A lifetime sentence in the so called new normal?

Because, no matter what I do, where I go, how I push, how I involve myself in life, in relationships with family and friends, no matter how much I join in, engage, power on,

That loneliness doesn’t leave my heart, my soul, or my body.

Counseling and therapy for anxiety and trauma…EMDR, bi-lateral brain stimulation, talk, tapping, retreats, meditation, new environments, connections with others…I’ve done it all, and I continue doing it all…

And…the loneliness that only intensifies as the years pass by.

973 days. 21 hours. 34 seconds. Since Chuck died.

I’m very definitely not the poster widow for getting over the grief.

It isn’t the chest slicing grief of the first 3 years, so I guess that’s good, right?

It’s more a sort of numbness, even though I feel so much, which is contradictory, I realize.

I long for him more as the years go by.

My body craves his presence next to me.

It all feels so fucking relentless.

This feeling. And, honestly…life.

I’m doing all the shit and creating beauty around me.

And that default heaviness of my heart and soul is ever present.

Is this the rest of my life, I wonder?

And how can it not be, really?

He’ll always be dead

And missing from me and I’ll always long for him,

Because he isn’t here.

Nor will he ever be here again.

His deadness is relentless.

I want to wake up from this

And I know I never will.

Will I ever feel the lightness of being again that I felt for 24 years?

Questions and more questions.

And

Dead

Dead

Dead.

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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