Widow's Voice

These Words~

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You are alive.

You are whole.

I say these words in my head so that I might hear them in my heart.

Chuck didn’t say these words to me, but he very easily could have.

No, I read these words in a book last year, and they echoed strongly through me.

If I listen closely to my soul I can hear Chuck speaking them to me

As he bends to look straight into my blue eyes with his green gaze.

His gaze was filled with Love as his hands cradle my face.

Sometimes, of course, in life, his eyes also denoted frustration at what he dubbed my stubbornness but I named as determination.

That stubbornness that caused him aggravation over the years has stood me in good stead in these years since his death.

You are alive.

You are whole.

I whisper this to myself frequently and I pause and consider what they mean to me in this life after.

Yes, I’m alive. Still.

Whether I wish to be or not.

It’s irrefutable that I am alive, though it has taken me a long time to own up to the idea,

Because, the truth is, life is not near as beautiful as it was with him.

But I am whole, and I know this at the core of my being.

I am not broken.

Chuck’s death did not break me.

It did shatter my heart into shreds of tiny glass pieces that made me bleed.

But I’m not damaged goods. I will not allow even this to break me and make me less than who I am or can be.

I haven’t lived 34 frickin’ years of sobriety to have this destroy me.

I’m intelligent. I carry myself with confidence. I’m kick ass when it comes to grit and determination. I know how to love and be loved.

I’m also so lonely for him that I don’t understand how I’m still walking upright on this earth.

I crave his touch even 7 years later. I always will.

How can I not?

But I hear Chuck saying these words to me, his own voice strong in his confidence in me, when his absence is just too fucking much for me to bear for one more moment.

Not judging me. Not expecting anything of me.

He always knew me better than anyone else. He knew the woman he loved and I know he knew I wouldn’t go quietly into that good night.

I hear Chuck saying to me…

I feel his arms wrapped firmly around me…

I feel his Love surrounding me…

You are alive.

You are whole.

Take all that this life is without me…the grief, the devastation, the memories, the beauty of our Love, and do everything you can to make it matter. Shout and scream your defiance into the Universe and talk about me and us and who we were together and let nobody try to silence you. Just keep suiting up and showing up, Miller. Keep going even when it’s too much. Do it anyways and do it with even more grit and determination. It doesn’t have to be easy, but when have you ever done anything the easy way? Keep your heart open, you hear me? You keep it open. That’s the way you’ll find me again. Keep it open. Steer your pink car in all the directions of the compass and know that I’ve left markers for you along the way. 

You are alive.

You are whole~

 

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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