A legacy of my grief for my life mate/soul mate is a sense of adventure. During the worst of my grief, this adventuresomeness was more of a need than a sense. I don’t know if the extra effort adventure took helped balance the pain, if doing something epic helped make me feel alive, or if I simply wanted to keep from drowning in loneliness, but for whatever reason, I sought adventure.
Now, after more than eight years, I don’t crave adventure in the same way but a sense of adventure has become part of me.
I’m on a road trip, and because of an unexpected snowstorm road trip, I had to stay an extra night at a motel rather than heading on down the road, which tickled me. And when the motel lost power for a few hours, I couldn’t help smiling. It all just seemed so . . . adventurous.
I can live with that.
***
(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)
Bertram's Blog 
November 2, 2018 at 6:26 am
Pat
Have a great time. Be careful on the adventure
November 2, 2018 at 8:53 pm
Thank you! I’m back safely.
November 2, 2018 at 1:59 pm
Traveling on the road a lot, losing power in a snowstorm…if you don’t write a story about that, I might.
November 2, 2018 at 8:53 pm
Go right ahead! Have fun.
November 2, 2018 at 9:49 pm
Will do, and you as well! 😊
November 2, 2018 at 3:10 pm
WOW! Where was all that snow this early in the season?? I remember one year when my parents had come to fetch me home (my ex was in the military and his ship was sailing) we ran into a blizzard on the way home. The roads were closed so we had to stay at a motel. Which also lost power. What an adventure. I was pregnant and traveling with a cat!!
November 2, 2018 at 8:55 pm
I was in Colorado. We got 8″ of snow, but it melted quickly. Boy, you certainly had an adventure! Makes mine seem tame by comparison.
November 4, 2018 at 4:40 am
Sounds like you were “living large”! The way you tell the story is with a spirit of adventure and not fear or trepidation. When I think of that happening to me I’d predict my emotional state as the latter then probably attribute it to grief. Do you think grief is incorrectly and indiscriminately assigned to the feelings we experience in different situations.? Would I be better off to try to use words like bored, restless,lonely,frightened?
November 4, 2018 at 10:14 am
That’s a good question. I call it all grief because most of what I think/feel/do is related in some way to grief (or rather to Jeff’s being gone), but they are separate things. I can’t remember when it was that I started seeing these feelings as separate, but now if I feel bored or restless or whatever, I call it being bored or restless, not grieving. Since you love words and see their power, you would probably be better off to use the proper word to describe how you feel. It will isolate the feelings from grief (which little can be done about) and put them in a different perspective so you could do something about them if you wish.
November 4, 2018 at 7:31 am
Nice photo.
Paul and I drove through a snow storm (years ago) in New Mexico Mts. (with Black Ice). Was not a good idea. Very scary.
Heard some truckers talking in the restaurant behind us, saying they were getting out of there tonight. Otherwise, they would get snowed in for a couple of days. So, we listened to them and took off.
All the motels were full there too. So, we really did not have much choice. We were late getting to town.
November 4, 2018 at 9:59 am
That would have been scary!
November 4, 2018 at 7:34 pm
That looks cold … and adventurous!
November 4, 2018 at 10:14 pm
Surprisingly, it wasn’t that cold, but it was invigorating, at least during the few minutes I was outside.