Widow's Voice

This Odyssey of Love

| Posted by:

http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/1653248_612371672151104_1293208956_n.jpgI’m down to my last month here in Phoenix, staying with our oldest son.  On June 21 my daughter and I will hitch up my PinkMagic rig and head north and then west on our Nothin’ But Love cross-country tour. 

We could head directly west and then north along the California coastline.  We could, but we won’t.  Quite simply, I can’t.  If we head due West, she and I would be driving the very roads that my husband and I drove a little over a year ago, headed to our 3 month rental in southern California, where he died.  And as much as I’ve pushed myself in this last year since his death, I just can’t do that trip.  Maybe someday.  Not now.  My heart is too broken.  With our more northerly route I’ll still be traveling the roads he and I did, but those roads will carry a different meaning for me.

My next 6 months on the road will be, in many ways, my final farewell to my husband, as I scatter his cremains in our favorite places.  There is bound to be pain-how can there not be as I stand where he and I last stood together?  But I know that there will be beauty also.  The beauty that comes from knowing how deeply I was loved in this life, and the beauty that comes from knowing that I will always have that love in me and with me. 

Chuck set me on this path with his last request.  He told me that he’d find me out on the road and I believe that he will.  Friends will join me and my daughter for rituals along the way and the love he left behind for us, for so many, will spread in a ripple effect from state to state.

I’m going to find him out there and I’m going to find a place of peace within myself and feel even more strongly bound to him because of it.  My heart is open to life, even with this devastating grief.

Crater Lake, Oregon.  Little Big Horn, Montana.  Crazy Horse, South Dakota.  Those are the places he named for me.  He knew I’d know the others and I will. 

He and I spent 4 years traveling this country as Happily Homeless.  Its been 1 year and one month since he died.  I spent 3 months traveling from Connecticut to Florida and then here to Arizona.  In 1 month my daughter and I will turn my pink car, towing my pink-trimmed trailer, out of my son’s driveway and begin an Odyssey that will take me we know not where, other than a general direction.  And I’m okay with not knowing. We’re headed north then west, then east, then south, then west again, returning to Arizona near the end of the year.  Along the way we’ll meet people who will change our perspectives, our grief, our lives and our hearts, I have no doubt.

Chuck prepared me, because of the life we lived together, to be able to do this.  His love will travel with me, with our daughter.  The Odyssey of Love continues in one month~http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Collasssge.jpg

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~

TO LEAVE A COMMENT ON A BLOG, sign in to the comments section using your Facebook or Gmail accounts, or sign up for Disqus.