Widow's Voice

Time and Wishing~

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I’m coming up on 6 years since Chuck died.

April 21.

It’s weird how my brain works with time regarding his death.

For the first 5 years I counted in days and weeks and months.

In the last few weeks, I’ve found myself saying almost 6 years.

Once April 21 comes…which is my New Year, by the way, instead of January 1, I know I’ll say it’s been over 6 years now.

I’ll know exactly, because I have a counter on my phone and I track those smaller moments of time…months, weeks, days, minutes, seconds.

I’m not quite sure why. I just do.

Time is meaningless to me, and yet I count every second of it.

In the past, at least. Which I’ve just now realized, as I’m writing about it.

I don’t count for the future, other than wondering how the fuck long I’ll have to live this life without him.

But, for the first time since that April night when my life disintegrated around me, I’m actually dreaming a goal into being.

A couple years ago I started thinking about going to Scotland.

I was there when I was 16 and loved it, and Chuck and I had planned to go there together at some point.

And then he died, so now he has to go as cremains.

But, yeah, I’ve decided to take my Odyssey of Love to the moors and misty glens of the land where my great grandfather lived.

When he was asked, as an old man, if he’d ever return to Scotland, he’d reply, in his thick Scottish accent when they build a bridge, laddie. When they build a bridge!

I’ll take a plane, and I’ll carry a pink backpack and my plan is to search out all the magical places in that faraway land that has always echoed in my heart with mystery and romance.

I want to see the Standing Stones on the Isle of Lewis, and explore the haunted battlefields of Culloden Moor and Hermitage Castle where Mary, Queen of Scots rushed to be at the side of her lover, James Hepburn.

I’m making plans, and dreaming, so that’s a new thing, but built into my plans is the total knowledge that they may never come to pass because I might die in the meanwhile, or one of my kids might get ill or die. Or one of my grands.

Disaster mode thinking has always helped me. In that I anticipate the absolute worst…go out to that ledge and stand with my toes hanging over…and then, as news improves, I step back from the edge bit by bit.

It’s actually kind of freeing to me to think in this mode. Anticipate the worst and, when the worst doesn’t happen, I feel twice as successful. Maybe that’s convoluted thinking, but…welcome to my management skills.

So, yes, wishing Scotland into being and when it happens, it will be twice as good because nothing bad happened to keep me from going. Right?

When our worlds disintegrate around us, and we find ourselves still living the life we used to have, we oftentimes come to the realization that that life no longer fits us. We don’t want that life anymore. The person who made it what it was for us is dead and gone.

So what other possibilities are there out there for me now, if I just open my mind and heart?

My mind and heart led me to create my Odyssey of Love. 

My Odyssey of Love is all about possibilities we can create into being because, well….why the ever loving fuck NOT?

All this pink?

It’s Scotland bound.

I wonder if I can find a pink tartan while I’m there…

 

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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