Widowhood And The Need To Travel

I never really understood it until I was forced to. 

As a child, my mother dragged me onto one bus tour after another. Led by fierce umbrella-yielding tour guides, I was usually the only person on the trip under the age of 50. I boarded each tour bus, my hair pulled tightly back in classic pigtails, skinned knees covered with fresh band-aids, and endured the jubilant greetings of older couples who pinched my cheeks and exclaimed, “Isn’t she just a cutie! My, how she has grown since the last time I saw her!” The last time they had seen me being approximately two hours earlier. With each pinched cheek, I promised myself that I would never take a bus tour as an adult. 

And I haven’t.

But, I didn’t understand what my mother was doing. I didn’t comprehend this overpowering and apparent desire to travel once widowed. I thought it was just another defining characteristic of my mother’s personality.

Until I became a widow. 

My mother was only 41 when she lost her husband. I was only a few years older when I was forced to look at the future through those same eyes. In early grief, I struggled with being in my home, at my job, and in a community that held too many painful memories. I was forever and constantly reminded of what I had lost. And making things even more difficult for me was the fact that I couldn’t ask my mother for guidance because she had died a few years earlier.

So I was left to wonder. 

And to plan. 

And plan I did! I began to blaze an uncharted path towards healing, a path towards learning how to continue to love my lost husband while still being able to enjoy the new life I had without him. In the weeks after his death, I searched for something to ease that pain, I searched for something to give me a distraction, something for me to plan, something that would allow me to escape my home that was filled with memories I couldn’t manage. 

What did I do? Naturally, I did what it seems that most widows do and I planned a trip! My plan was not to embark on a bus tour with a forceful, domineering, umbrella-yielding tour guide. No, I would be in charge of my own tours! I planned a trip that fit MY needs. It took me months to work out all of the details and it took me months to complete the trip. There were times that I wanted to give up and go home, but I didn’t. I completed the trip exactly as I had envisioned it. An almost 14,000-mile RV trip that took me to the west coast, the east coast, and the deep south. 

Once I completed that trip, I was hooked! Travel had healed a small part of my soul. Nature had healed another small part. Back home again, I began to plan the next trip. As soon as I returned home from that trip, I planned another. Trip after trip, I continued to spend as much time at destinations both close to home and far away, always finding an aspect of nature to give me her healing elixir. I was compelled, and continue to feel an overwhelming desire to suck the last drop of life out of every moment that is left to me. 

Had my mother felt this same way? She had never spoken of it. Throughout my childhood and adulthood, she never really spoke of the ache and pain that is widowhood. I never saw her cry or heard her express her feelings about the person who was palpably missing from every major life event. 

And now, five years after losing my best friend, my soulmate, my kindred companion, I continue to travel. I continue to forge this uncharted path and share this journey with others. But mostly, I continue to make the choice to wring out every drop of the life that is left to me, whatever that may be. 

As of today, I have walked this path of widowhood for five years. I’ve learned many things along the way. Mostly, I learned that I wanted to live. Not in the way my mother had, and certainly not in the way I had seen other widows use their remaining days to wither and fade away from what could have been a good life. I decided that I wanted to live in a way that was true to my soul. A way that was true to my being while still honoring the many whom I had lost.  I wanted to blaze my own trail. A trail that worked for me.