Widow's Voice

Trying not to Grinch the Holidays~

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I feel like such a grinch with the holiday season.  Honestly, it was never a big day for me or my husband, especially once the kids left home.  The days we celebrated, the days that meant so much to us, were our birthdays~the days we each came into this world~and our anniversary~the day we joined our lives.  

That wet-blanket feeling of the holidays, that feeling that you hate to impose on others, so you try as hard as you can to put the face on and force some joy into your heart and involve yourself with whatever activity or conversation that is going on around you but after a while you’re so exhausted that you just need to go away and be by yourself.  But you don’t want them whoever they are to notice because then they’ll come after you and find you in tears or just lying down from the aforementioned exhaustion and they’ll ask you questions or try to talk to you with the best intentions and you might talk with them about your dear one who is no longer here and his/her absence looms so hugely and you just can’t do this thing any longer and you don’t want to be that wet blanket but try as you do you can’t force any other feeling and you’re just tired.

I look at my adult kids and I know that they are each having their moments of missing their dad, even as it’s a constant throb in their lives but yeah, Christmas makes it even more so for them.  And I know that they will listen if I wanted to speak of my husband but I don’t want to bring them down even more than I don’t want to bring friends down so yeah, sometimes I do disappear but not for too long because I don’t want them to be concerned.

What a mish-mash grief is on an ordinary day.  Add a holiday and light a match and…well…here I am.  

Remembering to the times I shared with my husband in years past.  Watching our kids now, with their husbands and wives and kids, knowing that Chuck and I had our time of doing all of this and wondering if I had my time and now it’s all about being alone.

Being a widow goes beyond being lonely.  I don’t even know what word to use for it.  Alone in a sea of people and exhausted from trying to be present and seize the moment.

For me, in the midst of it, I think of all of you, my sister and brother widows, and my heart reaches out to each and every one of you.  Today, and Christmas, and as the New Year comes in.

May we all be blessed~

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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