Widow's Voice

This~

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I’ve been on the road for two weeks now with my daughter in this continuing Odyssey of Love.  Not necessarily by plan but happening nonetheless, we’re traveling the same roads my husband and I drove in our first year out on the road.  Not by plan only because all we know is that we’re headed north to Washington state, where we’ll turn East and make our way eventually to the Atlantic coast.

This is incredibly painful and I don’t know how I’m going to sustain it over the next 6 months except that I will because this is what I need to do.  This is the road Chuck set me on when he asked me to return to his favorite places and scatter his cremains.  He knew the kind of woman I am and that this is what would help me best manage my grief.  So, its okay within the parameters of everything really not being okay at all, if that makes sense. (and I know it does to you who are living this alone life now).  My only alternative is settling down without him, and I just can’t do that.  Soldier on is my motto.  One step, one breath, one heart beat.

Beaches come across unexpectedly, the Redwoods, the gorgeous Pacific Coast Hwy…remembering back to the joy he and I felt to be out exploring this country together, to have so much time together, the conversations, the love…he spoke often of time wealth, which is what we had for almost 4 years on the road.  Until we didn’t have time of any kind left at all.

I look at the front of my T@b trailer throughout the day and the letters that shine forth in raspberry pink splendor. 

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Those 3 letters tell me in no uncertain terms that I will get through this because this is who I am.  Each day I consciously live into it.  Those letters allow me to feel all of this devastation and get up and do whatever needs to be done no matter what.  Chuck knew I’d make something of this and I may not have much sense of anything any longer, but I do have determination.  Or at least what passes for determination.

There is so much love out here.  I want to tell you all that.  And I want to encourage you to tell your own story because there are people who care.  My daughter and I are meeting people every day, whether its along the road traveling or when we stop to camp.  They all have hugs for us and oh, those hugs mean so much as I feel them enfold my soul and broken heart.

I picture a yoke across my shoulders with a bucket on each side.  One bucket holds grief and the other holds Love.  Throughout the day both spill over and lay calm and spill over again but, at the end of the day, if both buckets are fairly well-balanced, then I consider I’ve had a good day.

Grief is love and love is grief and both are magical and the same thing in some way that I haven’t yet defined except that I know love spills from my eyes frequently, coming straight from my heart and I allow it all to happen and I hug and receive hugs and even though there is so much horrible missing-ness of my most beloved husband, it is still okay and I’ll somehow be okay again too.

That’s all.

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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