Lack of Power - This Is My Dilemma

I seem to be in a lot of meetings where the topic revolves around the theme of Powerlessness.  Maybe that's because the whole theme of the whole fricking Program revolves around powerlessness and my inability to see that I am, in fact, powerless.  Any troubles that I have invariably come back to me trying to exert my self on the universe.  My understanding is that the universe that I'm trying to control is quite large and is expanding (getting larger) at the rate of 50 miles per second per 3 million light-years.  Yeah, I don't know what that means, either, but it sounds really, really big or fast or something.

What makes it even worse is when I run into those situations where I really do have a better idea.  Don't laugh - it happens from time to time.  These situations require me to step back and let people, places, and things run their own course.  I like who I am today, more or less, and it took what it took to get me to this place.  Some of it was torturous but it took torture to make me whole.

Crap Output Analysis

During the course of a mildly interesting, totally self-absorbed personal anecdote at my regular men's meeting I talked about both the SuperK Tiff and The Great Leg Caper.  I'd say that the group is about half married guys and half single or divorced guys.  I really like these guys. They're really good guys.  They're also flawed and complicated and frequently wrong, just like me.

After the meeting ended a couple of the divorced guys came up and basically told me I shouldn't take any crap from my wife.  I quickly explained that I wasn't taking any crap from her and if I was it would be a tiny fraction of the crap that she takes from me.  I'm under no illusions as to which of us is the most difficult person to live with.  Any crap she gives me is richly deserved and she could amp up her crap output and not put a dent in her accumulated crap stockpile.  I'm saying she could really dish out the crap she delivers and I would be peepless.

Then, I began to run the gauntlet of the married guys, dudes not quite as eager to give me advice.  One of my buddies said: "So are you going to be OK?"  I immediately jumped to my wife's defense and he almost as quickly interrupted to ask: "No, your leg."  He got it - spouses argue.  Mothers die.  Sponsors go to the big meeting in the sky.  Bad, uncomfortable, annoying shit happens.  

No one here gets out alive.

More of That "If It's Your Will" Crap

So SuperK and I were having a bit of a tiff on Sunday - nothing serious albeit unpleasant for both of us.  We're good at taking the long view with most arguments; consequently we're good at getting things out into the open air where they can breathe.  We're tired of sealing them up in airtight containers and putting them in the way back area of the fridge.  You know those containers - you open them up eventually and find a Nasty Surprise.  And it's not like we want to hurt each other's feelings but sometimes you have to hurt your mate's feelings to get something off of your chest so you can move along to the solution phase.

On Monday morning I went to the doctor's office so he could have a look at a troublesome leg I'm stuck with.  I thought it was a routine panic on my part - the doctor thought otherwise.  I was shuttled off immediately for some tests and had the results been what my doctor thought they were going to be I was off to the emergency room and into the hospital.  I tried to keep SuperK in the loop as this situation unfolded but it was a bit hard because I was in exam rooms and the like.

I did my usual Program thing which is to get a handle on the worst possible outcome and then get good with that.  I was worried enough that I actually did one of my rare "if it's your will this is what I want" prayers.  I try to avoid these prayers as a general rule.  They seem pretty self-serving although The Book is very clear that a proper use of the will is to do what we think is best AS LONG AS we add that "if it's your will" crap to the action.

SuperK was worried.  She's my wife and she loves me - preceding day tiff hang-over notwithstanding - and she did a lot to help that morning.  Surprising everyone, the test showed a pretty routine condition - one that wouldn't even require any treatment - and not a potentially catastrophic one.

I was damned relieved.  SuperK was damned relieved.  As I sat with my doctor I joked that my wife had gone from homicidal to non-homicidal in the course of 24 hours.  He laughed.  "Yes, circumstances can do that," he said.

Later, SuperK said: "You should have told him that I was worried you were going to die before I had a chance to kill you."

I laughed.  Kind of.  Then I hid all of our knives.

Another Hula Hoop Day

Whew.

It is good to be home.  I have had a blank mind the last week and please: no comments from the peanut gallery on that softball I just lobbed into home plate.

I have tried to call my father every other day or so since I returned.  Sometimes he answers, sometimes he doesn't, but you can forget the return call.  The calls last approximately 2.7 minutes.  So be it.  It is what it is.  This is behavior long established 

I ask my sister how she thinks he's doing and I get a food report and a sociability report.  I do not get an alcohol report which I think is the most important report.  Apparently, no one else does.  I think he may be fooling them a little bit with his drinking patterns and I think there is probably some denial on their part and I also think that I should probably keep my fucking nose out of other people's business.  I say again: it does no one any good to harp on what I perceive as their shortcomings and errors and defects of character, and it's not as if my life is any paragon on righteous living and good choices.

I LOVE it when people give me advice.  Unsolicited advice.

The difficulty is that I have spent so much of my life - all of my adult life - around alcoholic drinking and aberrant behavior, facts that make it hard to pipe down when I see someone drinking like a drunk.  I pointed out to many people that dad drinks in the A.M. yet no one ever brings it up.

Today I will respect your hula hoop.  If I can't get inside there with you then it's none of my damn business.

Logic, Straightened

This is an end of an era.

I have decided to leave my father be.  I look back to the first few days of my visit and I believe my behavior fell into the category of badgering and hectoring when I wanted to be supportive and compassionate.  Dad is sharp as a tack - he is aware of what he's doing.  If he wants to drink beer at 6AM and then maintain a mild buzz all day long, ingesting most of the calories not due to the alcohol in the form of highly processed sugar, so be it, right?  Did I think that if I pointed out that this didn't fall under any recommended dietary plan for the elderly that he would have been shocked?  My intent was never to make him feel worse than he already does.

The Old City, I think, is going to keep receding further and further into the rear view mirror.  I've been back 8 or 9 times in 4 years, and that's enough for a while.  My mother and my sponsor have died, my father has chosen his path with vigor and prejudice, and my sister and her family are just fine without me.

I have spent a great deal of time trying to stay in touch with a lot of old friends, an effort that has by and large not been reciprocated, and that's OK, too.  I've always been one of the most diligent people I know in this regard - it's unusual, I think.  I'm the outlier, not the people who are blithely going about their business, not thinking of me, not trying to stay in touch.  I found this irritating the first couple of times before settling into the acceptance routine.  I was a piece of a complicated puzzle; I was removed while the rest of the puzzle stayed put; and I'm mad at the puzzle?  Give me a break.

The hazard I run when I try to maintain old contacts in an overly rigorous manner is that I don't make the effort to develop my local contacts - it has been far easier to decide to call someone who I've known for 25 years than someone who I've known for one.  I still love the old friends and I still want to stay in touch but I think it needs to be an occasion and not the norm.

Is this the last time I see my father alive?  Could be, could be.

Semantic Maze of Circular Logic

Semantic:  Of or relating to the meanings of words.

I'm afraid I'm in trapped way down deep in one of those semantic mazes of circular logic.  If I sit quietly, take a deep breath, and let my mind fill it's always the same thing right now.  I have nothing new to say so I'm condemned to repeating myself over and over and over . . . 

I want to help but I don't see the point in offering help to someone who doesn't want to be helped.  It's a waste of my time and it's an annoyance to the person I'm tormenting.  I don't like Brussels sprouts so quit telling me about the great new sauce you have for Brussels sprouts.  I can still taste the Brussels sprout flavor which I find objectionable.  Unless you have chocolate sauce dissolved in marshmallows and coated with melted Velveeta it's enough with the Brussels sprouts, already.

So much of my worldview is shaped by The Program.  If someone wants help we'll go to the wall trying to provide it - if they don't, we let them be.  There is nothing worse to an active alcoholic than having someone who isn't drinking telling you to stop except, of course, not being able to drink at all.  This is the 12th circle of hell.  This is infinitely worse.  A good drunk can parry the thrusts of the most dedicated proselytizer.  

So here's my father refusing to make use of any services, getting more and more miserable.  I'm buying into this bullshit a little but not too much, I'm proud to say.  Last night he stunned me by saying he wanted to go down to dinner.  There was a line to get into the dining room - maybe a five minute wait.  The muttering and bitching started.  "Where do you have to be?" I wanted to ask.  We were seated with a couple of very nice women who live on dad's floor.  The service, of course, was molasses that night.  It really was slow.  Dad got more and more agitated, finally getting up and leaving without a word to anyone.  I didn't go.  I ate my dinner with these very nice ladies.  The food is pretty good here.  I stuffed myself unabashedly.  The ladies insisted on having the dining room staff box up dad's dinner so I could deliver it to him.

"Fuck that," I almost said.  He was right down here - if he wanted the food he should have waited.  They were so nice I did take the food up, which he picked at and then fed down the disposal.

What can you do?

Remorseful Seaweed

Remorse:  A feeling of regret or sadness for having done wrong or sinning.

I want to help but I don't see the point in trying to help someone who doesn't want to be helped. It's a waste of my time and an irritation to the person on whom the unwanted helped is being foisted.  Last time I came in I spent hours and hours getting my parents financial records in order - sorting, discarding, setting up a system that would keep everything ship-shape as time marched on.  I came home to renewed chaos - I can't even find the old records let alone monitor what has happened in the interim.

I started to battle some guilt as the doctor was emphasizing the fact that dad should go down for breakfast and dinner, that one of the big pitfalls of the surviving spouse of a long-term marriage is isolation.  I haven't been encouraging dad to do this - it seems roughly equivalent to encouraging a rock to apply to grad school.  But then again I have the benefit (or the curse) of decades of routine with my father.  The doc wants dad to socialize and I could help but the doc isn't around when dad performs his daily rejection reading of the menu, and in high dramatic form.  If I could wheedle and cajole him into going down a time or two it wouldn't change the fact that he won't do it when I'm gone.  I loathe wasted motion.

You'd think that as you get older that you'd have seen everything at least once.  But then there was India and now there's this. 

Happy Hours

I'm pretty sure that when I leave here I'm going to feel bad about myself.  I think this is a no-win situation or maybe a lose-lose situation or maybe I'm screwed.

I don't think things have gone far enough yet.  I think they're going to improve, against all odds but probably not, or they need to get worse before they're bad enough to require urgent attention.  I don't see how I can change anything right now.  It's very frustrating.  My father is a competent adult doing what he wants without being a danger to others or himself and nobody else sees a need to panic and make big changes.  Maybe they're right - what do I know, anyhow? - but probably not.

When I get upset I get anxious.  I can't say that what I feel right now is depression or grief or fear - it all feels likes generalized, free-floating anxiety, like the sliding door is off the tracks.  If I just force the shit out of it then it'll start to work right.  (Ed. Note: I had a little issue with the sliding doors on my dad's shower tonight - can you tell how I resolved it?  Hint: forcing the shit out of something was involved.)

I took my dad to his doctor today.  I've known the guy for a long time and he's a good man and a good doctor.  I snuck out of the little examination room where the patient is inevitably sequestered for a long period of time - why don't they just leave you in the goddam waiting room with the magazines and comfortable chairs and nice TV where you can sit around and think: "I wonder what she has?  Plague?  Gonorrhea?") and spoke with the doc for a bit before he saw my dad.  I wanted to talk about the drinking but the medical profession is more or less clueless about alcoholism as far as I can tell.  Maybe the psych docs have a clue but the rest of them think it's some kind of treatable malady like a rash.

Control:  Influence or authority over.

He was very concerned that my father was isolating - a very good, very real concern, one that I share wholeheartedly  - and suggested Happy Hour as an anecdote.  He stressed the one, maybe two drink part of it but I could see my dad's eyes lit up - he heard "Go drink" and not "Go socialize."  Have GOT to be careful with your wording when you're discussing alcohol with the active alcoholic.  He triumphantly told my sister tonight that "the doctor wants me to go down to Happy Hour."  

I am not in control.

Are You Thinking About Me?

Patient:  Content to wait if necessary; not losing one's temper while waiting.

I can tell that my patience is shot as I go through this.  I'm not full of patience and tolerance on my best days and I find that I'm easily irritated at my family, my friends, The Old City, the weather, for chrissake.  All of these things are fine.  All of these things are rolling along.  I am not at the center of the anyone's world.  No one else is thinking about me.  I never thing about anyone else - why would I believe that they're thinking about me?  NO ONE is doing anything at me.

And my sister is doing a splendid job handling everything back here.  The problem once again is me and my expectations of what I should be doing to help, how my talents should be put to use, when mostly my sister wants me to simply stay with my father for two weeks so she doesn't have to worry about his day to day well-being.

I see.

Happy Hour

As god is my witness I have never experienced anything like this, and I'm pretty old.  I've been around alcoholism regularly for a long time, too, and I've never been a part of this.  This dude is drinking.  This dude does not care how flimsy his excuses are.  I remember setting a can of beer down at my feet as a cop car pulled up and telling the cop, with a straight face, that it wasn't my can of beer.  I believed myself and I figured I could get him to believe me, too.  It was ridiculous.  I remain convinced that I could beat the shit out of a lie detector.  I don't think that needle would budge.

George Costanza: "Remember - it's not a lie if YOU believe it."

The meeting topic last night was resentment and the solution to the problem ended up at Powerlessness as it so often does.  We all come to the conclusion - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly - that we only get to control what's inside our own hula hoop.  Other people are fine.  The government is fine.  The whole fucking world is fine.  We are going to enjoy life a lot more if we stop trying to control other people.  That person that is driving you crazy is fine; in fact, that person is a gift.

My dad gets so aggravated at the other residents that he has been known to get up mid-meal, leaving his food right where it is, and storm back up to his room.  He also goes down to Happy Hour every day and seems to tolerate all of these incredibly irritating people for as long as Happy Hour lasts.

I see the contradiction.

One Day At A Something or The Other

And here I am in The Old City.  Maybe I'm supposed to sit quietly with my ailing, grieving father and that's it, that's all I'm supposed to do.  Just sit quietly.

It's so tempting to try to solve other people's problems especially for a guy like me who has made such a stunning success with his own life.  Hell, I'm lucky if I can find my car keys.

I have been getting a lot of very basic advice from my paisanos during the last week: Do what's in front of you.  One day at a time.  Take the next right step, do the next indicated thing.  My life is so often very easy and I sail along handling little niggling problems of prosperity.  I guess I'm in the minute when I do this stuff.  It makes me pull up sharply when things spiral out of control and I have to take the advice I so blithely dispense.  It's a lot easier when it's coming out of mouth and at you than the other way around.  I'm lucky someone bigger than me hasn't fucking clocked me over the years.

Facts Is Facts

An amazing fact about alcoholism - reinforced here the last few days - is that it is a relatively simple and straight-forward mechanism.  People drink essentially because they like the effect alcohol produces on their body; this effect is highly exaggerated in the alcoholic, compelling them to drink more and more; and there is no getting between an alcoholic and the alcohol when they want to drink.

The Program has admittedly shaped a lot of my worldview - one of the Great Truths in my life is that help is almost always abundantly available to those who ask for it and that those who don't want any help, even if it's badly needed, are best left alone.

If he wasn't my dad I wouldn't waste a NY minute on him.  That sounds harsh, clinical, formulaic, but I rarely buy into some other alcoholic's bullshit.

Boots On The Ground

And then I send the following letter to my sister.  What a glaring difference in the tone between this and the letter to my sponsor's kids.  Alcoholism from the top and from the bottom.

"So . . .   something to think about in the next day or two.  And I'm going to talk to a few of my AA friends, including the estimable Shorty who has a ton of codependency experience.

Dad is drinking all day.  He gets up and pours a beer immediately.  He doesn't try to hide it from me even though I've told him it drives me out of the apartment.  I don't know what kind of access he has to liquor but he's knocking back a six pack a day, no small amount for an 86 year old man. He's not getting sloshed - he's just putting on a comfortable buzz.  We call this Maintenance Drinking in The Fellowship.

He isn't eating.  He has not been down to one meal since I've been here and has no interest in having the food delivered.  He'll eat a little if I fix it but he doesn't fix anything for himself beyond PB and crackers or half a banana, maybe Ensure.  He reads me the menu everyday before proclaiming that he's not eating any of that.  I mention the deli where they'll prepare and deliver anything but that goes nowhere.

He hasn't bathed since I've been home.  I've asked him several times if he needs help and he postpones, postpones, postpones, then says it's too late and he'll wait until tomorrow.  I did his laundry and he had a couple of T-shirts and a couple of pair of underwear, so I'm not sure he's changing clothes.

There are two schools of thought in The Program about these situations (and it's always easier when it's someone else's problem): confront the individual and try to get them help or let them find their own path.  Many problem drinkers don't want help and it's impossible to give it to them if they don't want it.

I'm sorry to have to send this - I just want you to understand what I'm seeing from ground zero.  Maybe he'll spin out of it on his own; maybe he'll keep doing what he's doing now and live for 20 years; maybe he's had enough.  Sometimes people have just had enough.  

Yeech."

Little Johnny

This was the note I sent to the children of my dear, departed sponsor.

Ken was my AA sponsor for the last 25 years.  I spoke with him at least once a week, every week for that entire time, more often when I was first getting sober or when I had upsets in my life, a practice that continued even after I left the area for Vacation City.  He knows more about me than anyone else on this earth.  He was a steady and guiding hand, and I loved him a lot and I'm going to miss him terribly.  

I had the opportunity to speak with him almost daily over the last 4 months.  We talked about death and dying, about god and heaven, about love and service.  He was a great listener over the years so I was thrilled that he also began to share many personal stories about his life during this time, things that I had never heard.  I think it was a way for him to continue letting go.

Today I am  burying my mother who died about 12 hours before Ken.  I imagine that they're up in heaven, having a cup of coffee, and shaking their heads at some boneheaded thing that I'm doing.  If there was one thing that they had in common - besides their deep and enduring faith in the mercy of god - it was that I never, ever, ever heard either of them say anything derogatory about anyone else.  Talk about setting a high standard.

And now a word about Little Johnny.  I didn't grow up Catholic but apparently Little Johnny is a figure of some notoriety in Catholicism, a good-hearted but unpredictable and sometimes profane scamp.  Ken loved Little Johnny stories.  For several years on Thursday night a few of us would go out to supper after taking a meeting to Riverside Jail.  My friend, Little Westside Johnny, and I would trot out our latest Little Johnny joke.  About a quarter of the way through Ken would start to giggle; by the halfway point he was yelling at us to stop or he was going to pee his pants; and well before the end of the joke he would be all the way over at the checkout corner, pounding on a table, tears pouring from his eyes.  I don't think we ever got all the way through one joke - all we had to do was get started - Ken was the show, not Little Johnny.

God speed, Kenner.

Aging Well

And no problem with the 6 AM beer this morning, either.  I say this again: a drunk will choose alcohol over family and work and health and life itself.  This is a fact, born out in my own experience and reinforced over many years in recovery.

I am not an overly emotional person - I am steady, controlled, reflective.  I don't react with great horror or great joy to events in my life.  I'm sure that there is some small measure of suppressed dysfunction there but I'm equally convinced that this is who I am.  I'm reasonably happy so I think that the way I react to life is OK - maybe my behavior doesn't always fall in some kind of prescribed social norm but that's OK, too.

At my mother's wake there were a lot of people there from my past.  I kind of had a good time.  It was great catching up with everyone and I wasn't lost in the throes of an existential grief over mom's death - as I've said I was in a good place with her, comfortable in my own skin about our relationship.  Not always doing what she wanted me to do but consistent in my actions.  I joked around a little.  There were 3 dear friends from high school that came to pay their respects and they sat together in the rear of the church - should I say that they were the only 3 high school friends to show up and they were all Jewish, attending a very fundamental Christian service?  Something about actions speaking louder than words in all of that.

I snuck up behind them before the casket procession began.

"I'd like to sit with you guys but I think it might be a little disrespectful," I quipped.

And then - as the casket was being rolled down the center aisle - I peeled off and commented that "You know that I've aged better than all of you."

I think mom would have approved - she loved all 3 of these dudes.

Before the casket was closed I leaned over and kissed my mom's forehead.  She was cold - which I expected - and she was very perfumey - which I did not.  It left a sweet chemical taste in my mouth that I found most unpleasant.  I did something that wasn't in my character to try to fit into a suggested norm.  It was a dopey move on my part, very uncharacteristic, and I wish I hadn't done it.  

The jokes I regret not a bit.

RIP Mama.

Have a Drink On Me!

So my dad felt so bad about the repercussions of our beer talk this afternoon that he had a couple of beers for dinner.  I would have been terribly offended but I really admired his chutzpah.  I mean this is right out of the Seaweed Playbook - I'm sorry, I'm never going to do it again . . . etc etc all while I'm popping a beer and lifting your wallet and stealing your weed.   I wanted to drink.  I was not done drinking.  Nothing - and I mean nothing - was going to get in the way of my drinking.  You were simply not worth it.  I didn't care who you were - you were not worth it.

Have GOT to love people who drink alcoholically.  

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. 

Funeral Number One

The weirdness of a funeral . . . 

It is, I understand, a human tradition of long-standing to formalize death.  I guess it helps us understand it or finalize things or gain closure.  As in, "there's my loved one in a casket and now they're closing the lid."

I enjoyed seeing a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time: friends of my sister, neighbors from our short, dead-end street where everyone had lived forever and ever, mothers and dads from our tight-knit church, friends of mine who came to give some support.  Some of the folks that came surprised me and some who didn't surprised me as well.

I guess I'm not a terribly emotional person because I don't feel especially terrible.  I bet I'll feel the loss going forward.  I guess we all mourn in our own way, yeah?