Widow's Voice

Thinking, and Overthinking~

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What do you think about happiness?

The possibility for it, in widowhood, I mean.

And has the word changed in meaning for you since the death of your person?

Do you even know what it means in this life after?

I don’t know what happiness or joy means in this life.

It certainly isn’t what it used to be when Chuck was alive. When I felt easy, light-hearted, spontaneous…all those words to describe me and all the good things I felt during our 24 years together.

In this life, not only do I not know what the word means, but I’m not concerned about finding it or experiencing it and I’m not quite sure how it happens when there is such a sense of overwhelming loneliness in this without life.

I focus each day on making meaning of this life, and making a difference, and that’s good enough for me, honestly. Not because I have a low bar, but because those are the things that allow me to be okay in this widowhood.

But I do wonder, as I look about my widowed community, if that lightness of being only returns when we partner again, when we become someone’s special someone again. Even as, and I know that this happens most always, the missing of your person is always there, and there’s other issues that come up when we partner again.

I’m sure that there are many in the widowed community who have created new lives in which they are thoroughly satisfied, as they live solo, and I’m curious to know from them how long it took and how they define happiness. Joy. Satisfaction. 

And is it still the double edged sword because of what is always there….the absence of that one person?

There are, of course, those who felt compressed in their marriages/partnerships. Unable to be who they were. Or with an abusive person. Or an addict. All the horrid things that can’t help but leave one with a feeling of freedom upon their death, even as you grieve the end of possibilities.

For me, this isn’t about a lack of independence on my part. Or fear of being alone. None of those things.

I’m lonely for Chuck. Not male companionship. And I’m not sure that feeling will ever leave me. How can it, when he will always be dead? And if he’ll always be dead, how can I ever feel that lightness of being again?

Life in the wid hood is very confusing to me, in so many ways. There are so many unknowns. Well, everything is unknown, right?

It’s frickin’ exhausting, trying to figure it all out~

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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