Donna O’Dougherty stood in the entrance of the Hannaford in Concord looking for her friend Alison Miller. She knew she was there – she saw the pink in the parking lot.
“I could see the vehicle,” O’Dougherty said. “I mean, how could you not?”
Finally, she spotted Miller talking to a stranger. He wanted to know the story behind the colorful car and matching trailer.
And Miller was ready to tell it – just as she already had for thousands of people across the country.
After the death of her husband, Chuck Dearing, Miller embarked on her “Odyssey of Love” to honor his final request and start building a new life for herself. For three years, Miller has been on the road in her pink Ford Escape. She spends many of her days at the wheel and nights sleeping in her trailer at camp sites or military Fam Camps.
What began as a mission to scatter her husband’s ashes in the couple’s favorite places has turned into something much bigger, Miller said.
And she’s not stopping anytime soon.
“I’m living on the love Chuck left behind. And he left an awful lot,” Miller said. “Now it’s my job to go out and give it to others.”
After Dearing retired from the Air Force and his job in the civil service, the couple spent their last four years together traveling across the country, visiting all 48 continental states and enjoying – as they called it – the “happily homeless” lifestyle.
While passing through Southern California in April 2013, Dearing was diagnosed with his second bout of cancer – an agressive form of sarcoma. He died three weeks later.
Miller said her husband told her not to mourn for him in black. And when she told him she planned to continue traveling on her own, he asked her to scatter his cremains at different locations along the way.
“I told him I was going to paint my car pink so he could find me out there on the road,” Miller said. “And he said, ‘I’ll be looking for you.’ ”
So Miller bought a brand-new silver car and had it painted a custom-made color, which the painter dubbed “Chuck’s Watchin’ Over Me” pink. Seven months later, she added a trailer, which she has since filled with more pink, lots of glitter and photos of the couple from their 24-year marriage.
The glitz is the perfect conversation starter, Miller said, allowing her to make connections with people wherever she goes.
“The worst thing you can do in grief is isolate yourself. That’s also all you want to do,” Miller said. “So I knew if I at least made my external world color, it would draw people to me. And I could not escape.”
Miller always keeps two chairs outside her trailer, inviting people to come and talk or listen. She features accounts of her day-to-day experiences on her blog – and she has the website painted on the back of her trailer, so other drivers can look up her story and leave her notes.
The community she’s built up is the best part of it all, Miller added.
“Those messages, the people I meet on the road, the waves I get, the thumbs up – it’s what fuels me,” she said. “It lifts me, just a little bit more.”
By now, Miller has a list of friends and followers from every state. But without fail, she and Pink Magic – her name for the rig – always make their way back to New Hampshire to spend time at O’Dougherty’s place in Boscawen. The two have been friends for 44 years, since they met in eighth grade when Miller moved to the state.
“We’ve been through it all – marriage, divorce, children, death,” O’Dougherty said. “And lots of pictures by the car – with me and other people. People just seem to gravitate toward her.”
Miller’s next stop is Maine, and then she plans to drive down to New Jersey. But things might change – she doesn’t really plan where she’s going ahead of time.
“I’ve always been a gypsy at heart,” she said.
For now, Miller is looking for more places to share her story. One day she hopes to speak to travel around and give speeches at different venues. She’s also starting to write a book.
“It’s a reminder to others and myself that there’s just so much love out there,” she said. “And I get it. I’m a recipient of all that, too.”
Miller said she’s kind of like the Lone Ranger, but she goes by a different name – the Love Warrior.
“I will be who I am, no matter what the world wants me to be,” she said. “I want people to see me and ask, ‘Who was that woman all dressed in pink?’ ”
(Katie Galioto can be reached at 369-3302, kgalioto@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @katiegalioto.)