Widow's Voice

This Particular and Peculiar Sense of Non-being~

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There is a particular and peculiar loneliness of the sort that cannot be imagined for its’ overwhelming and enveloping totality, that strikes me when I am in a crowded room with those who are familiar to me, or not.  It’s a loneliness whose depth is equal to the surge of desire I would feel as I rose on my tiptoes to meet Chuck’s lips in a kiss.  It is a loneliness that hits like a lightning bolt out of the stormy sky, with thunder rolling in dark tones onwards and onwards and onwards again until I finally have no sense of self or place as it consumes me into it.

This particular and peculiar loneliness does not confine itself or define itself by my circumstances of living on the road, though I can and will admit that I am so much out of my element in the outdoors that I find myself ruminating on the sheer oddity of sitting in my trailer each night, or walking about in the darkness of yet another anonymous campground, contemplating what the royal fuck happened to my life.  It is as if I am newly arrived from outer space and all that was familiar to me is gone, and nothing familiar is to be found:  my environs, language, people, my own identity…I gaze upon it all with a wrinkled brow, attempting to understand what cannot be understood because there is no way to translate any of it.

The same feelings and emotions run rampantly through me as I stay with friends and family.  Not because of a lack on their part, ever.  It is simply because, at some point I must still close a door and find my pajamas and wash my face and busy myself until exhaustion overtakes me and I turn out the lights of wherever I am, and put my head upon Chuck’s pillow and my hand on his flag that rests at the head of whatever bed I lay upon…and sleep the sleep of a dead man who wakes frequently from that sleep to toss and turn.

Here’s the thing:  there are many ways to keep busy during a day, but night invariably arrives, and, in sleep, my body knows.  My mind, that part that lurks behind the daily activity..my mind knows his absence.  My heart that aches through the day but strives to keep balanced in spite of the ache…my heart knows his absence.  And my soul…my soul that knew his soul and cannot be separated from his soul…my soul recognizes his absence, and my mind and my heart and my soul feel his absence more clearly in the evening hours and into and through the night, and I ache. Oh, how I ache…

I was a woman energized in all social situations.  I always knew what to say and I loved being in a crowd of those I knew, or didn’t know, and I was good in crowds, and now that woman is gone and I feel her absence just as strongly and I feel awkward and mostly I don’t know what to say to anyone because mostly what I want to say is that I don’t know how to be here and I feel out of place and I don’t know how to find my place and I have no interest in talking about stupid shit and I end up feeling rude and socially inept and I want to say it’s loneliness please forgive me I don’t know how to be anymore!

So…mostly I’m silent and my mind is millions of miles away, somewhere and everywhere in the past, remembering and missing and wondering at the impossible possibilities of feeling all of this, yet feel so numb.  How it is possible to face one more day and one more night and repeat those days and nights constantly and continually while this loneliness of forever beats in me instead of my heart?

I am lonely.  Chuck is missing from me, and I am missing from myself~

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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