I Am Not Making This Up

I'm back at the small apartment that my parents have shared for a year.  My father has long been a closet drinker, kept in check by the presence of my mother and an inability to get out to buy his own alcohol.  The gloves, I fear, are off, and I don't know how well this bodes for my dad's long term viability.  He is almost 87.  I guess the flip side of the coin is that if the alcohol hasn't killed him yet he may be tougher than I think.

The beer in the refrigerator I noticed right away.  The hour long trips downstairs to "get the mail" right around Happy Hour were thinly veiled.  The plastic jugs of cheap vodka and generic whiskey under the sink in his bathroom were a bit more of a surprise, discovered as I was looking for some shampoo.  I swear.  Really.  I wasn't snooping.

The morning of my mother's internment I went down to the lobby to get a couple of cups of coffee and a roll for my dad's breakfast.  As I brought them over to the side table by his chair I noticed a coffee cup full of tea.

"Huh," I thought.  "Tea?"

I picked the cup up to make way for the coffee.  It was, oddly enough, cold to the touch.  I took a whiff.  Beer.  At 6 AM.  A little later he asked me if I would pick up a replacement case for him.  He was clearly distressed as he said this, and I know that he's clearly depressed about my mother's passing.  This is what we do as alcoholics: we push and push and push the boundary of appropriate behavior.  We say things and do things that we know are not acceptable but we want that alcohol.  We care about money and jobs and family but not as much as we care about drinking.

"Sure," I said, heading out the door.  I was not happy at this point.  I'm upset about events, too, and all of the alcohol suddenly really got to me.  I walked out with a cold chill and an uncomfortably strong interest in alcohol settling down on me.  I was on the phone immediately, running through four or five numbers because of the time difference until I got Willie.  I talked and he listened and I felt better - the compulsion lifted.  Scary that I can get a compulsion after 27+ years but there it was.

I sat outside the swim club for a while and talked some more on the phone before heading in to exercise.  As I took a breather after my first lap I noticed that one of my grand-sponsees was in the lane right next to me.  Right Next To Me.  He didn't know I was in town and I had never seen him at this club.  I got to talk some more.

After my swim I went to a meeting that I absolutely cannot stand, arriving when it was half over. Predictably, it irritated me for a while until I picked up on the fact that the topic was Step One.  This is the powerless over alcohol step.  OK, I'm getting the message.

After the meeting I went to the local grocery store to buy my dad's beer - yes, I had decided this was the thing to do under the circumstances - and ran into an old friend from The Program in the parking lot.

"I don't think I've ever been to this store," he remarked.

I talked some more.

"Where the hell's the beer aisle, anyway?" I quipped as we walked inside.

"I have no idea," he laughed.

As I was checking out I looked one aisle over and there was another friend of mine working as a cashier.  I went over and shook his hand, and I talked some more.

I am not making this up.