Widow's Voice

Wandering~

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I wander in and out of this life I live without Chuck.

Literally, of course, as I steer my pink car, towing my pink trailer, down roads and highways and byways,

Through cities and towns and tiny villages,

Past billboards, neon road signs, intriguing landmarks and historic monuments.

Our country is wide open,

With rolling hills, massive mountain ranges that challenge the engine in my car, fear inducing 1000 foot drop offs that allow me to see the tops of equally massive trees, and flat prairies taking my eye miles and miles ahead of me.

I’ve wandered these hundreds of thousands of miles, wondering

Where I might find that one whose absence from me is so present within me.

He’s to be found everywhere, of course, and nowhere, but, surely…somewhere?

Amidst the greens, and crashing waves of the northeast coast,

The flatness of mid-country with wheat colored stalks whispering across the plains,

Among the waters and islands of the northern states?

And the jaw dropping sights along the Pacific Coast Highway…

Everywhere. There.

Here with me, yet not.

I wander in and out of this physical terrain,

And in my heart and in fading memories that are still so clear, almost as a ghost from my past.

Each mile I drive, each vista that fills my eyes,

Fills my soul as I miss him more than the previous moment.

Even as I write this Love letter to him.

Our continuing Love story, written on tarred roads and sloping hills and winding mountain passes.

How long will your Odyssey of Love continue, people ask me,

When will you settle down?

My only response is why would I ever stop? This is my Love letter. 

To my beloved husband, Chuck D,

And to the community I’ve created out there where the sun rises and falls and the moon does the same and the leaves fall and the snow sweeps and the flowers spring forth and the bees dart back and forth on lazy summer days…

Our Love story.

My Love letter.

Endless. Never ending.

As long as I have breath to breathe.

My Odyssey of Love is my continuing Love letter to the world.

My link to Chuck.

My link to the world.

My saving grace~

 

 

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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