Soldier On

A lot of people from all corners of the retirement home have had nice things to say about my father.  Aides and nurses and the like, people that I recognized but generally couldn't identify by name, came by the room as I was cleaning out dad's stuff, brought up the qualities of the man that I loved the most and want to remember.  It was a good thing for me to hear, especially after watching his profound physical deterioration over the last week.  The people who staff the front desk, the cook, the kid that brought up the dinner that I ordered last night all mentioned dad fondly.

The people that we love, that we're close to, are revealed to us in all of their blazing glory and flaming imperfection as we maneuver through life.  Being a man who can find something wrong in a pile of uncut diamonds I tend to get out my great big nuclear microscope and investigate the holy hell out of those defects.  This does not make me a bad man and it is not particularly unusual.  It isn't particularly comforting, either.  Alcoholics are a perplexing lot, too - charming, charismatic, likable.  I believe that a lot of the frustration I had with dad can be traced to the fact that I was very much like him, especially in the defects department: impatient, intolerant, bit of a temper, brooding and unapproachable at times.  I focus on that and not the wonderful qualities I inherited from him.  Because I'm a guy who can find a defect etc etc.

What's the point here?  I never know what the goddam point is.  I guess I loved my father in all his glory and all of his murk and I'll remember the good stuff and I'll grow from the bad stuff.  Soldier on, as always.

Cold Eggs and Toast

I started to send some messages to the people who were closest to my dad right after his death.  For a moment - a moment only - I was sort of situation appropriate.  You know, someone just died so try not to be a sarcastic schmuck appropriate.

I told my sister to be careful, not to rush over.  Then I reminded her that dad was "with mom now, probably complaining that the eggs aren't hot enough."

It went like that for a while, to a variety of people on a variety of topics relating to dad.  Then I got busy.  Like right away.  I'm terrible at sitting and waiting - I like to have concrete tasks to accomplish.  My mind started to click immediately with who to call, where to go, what to do.

To thine own self be true.  I don't think anyone was surprised at how I behaved.

Sacred Seaweed

Sacred:  Designated or exalted by a divine sanction; possessing the highest title to obedience, honor, reverence, or veneration; entitled to extreme reverence; venerable. 

During the last day of my dad's life my sister and I spent much of the afternoon sitting in his room.  He was sedated at this point.  Morphine.  Must be a wonderful drug.  I knew a guy from The Fellowship who told me he shot morphine once and knew he could never do it again - he said it felt just a little too good.  I guess it does the trick.  Anyway, dad was kind of responsive, looking at us when we spoke to him, nodding, occasionally trying to smile.  Willie told me that the hearing is the last thing to go when someone is close to passing, that they can still hear you when you speak to them, so I tried to talk to him some, tell him that I loved him, that he was doing well, that it was all going to be OK.  Sometimes I was afraid that the sound of my voice made him restless so I stayed quiet.  At the end I was happier when he was sleeping, preferring that to the times he was restless, pointing at wraiths in the corner, grabbing at his blanket, asking for mom, for my sister, to go back to his apartment.  At one point he clearly said: "I'm outta here," either wanting to go home or letting me know it was time to really go, I'm not sure which.

My sister left around dinner time to take care of her family.  I came back two or three times in the evening.  The first time he opened his eyes when I said hello, the last two times he was totally unresponsive.  On my last visit I told him that I loved him, that it was OK if he wanted to let go and it was OK if he wasn't ready to let go, that mom and Jesus were waiting for him up in heaven.  His respiration rate was down to about 20 or 25 breaths per minute so I knew we were getting close.  Exhausted, I went to his apartment and went to bed.

I have been on the receiving end of text messages and emails and phone calls and Facebook posts during my stay.  I've shared about some of the very practical advice that I was given, solid stuff that I normally do but which slips my mind when I'm under stress.  I was also fascinated to see different people share some remarkably similar thoughts.  Willie and Shorty both told me to be present, that something very sacred was happening.  I liked the word: sacred.  I had never, ever, ever thought of death that way.  A lot of my friends are not people who you'd think of as being religious so it can be surprising to hear spiritual things coming from them.  You know how some religious people come across as condescending and smarmy, holier than thou, dismissive of anyone who doesn't live up to their high standards?  My friends aren't like that.  A while ago Willie shared somewhat sheepishly that he was reading every day from a very famous religious book.  I told him that I had read that very same religious book from five to eight times, probably rounding up so I'd go with the five number.  We both kind of went: "Huh.  No shit."

Anyway, dad died about seven in the morning.  I was getting ready to head over but wasn't there when he actually passed away.  That was fine.  I don't feel bad about it.  It's hard to be there all of the time.  And maybe he wanted to die quietly and alone.  I always thought that a great father's day gift for him would have been for everyone to get out of the house and just leave him the fuck alone for the whole day, so he could watch NASCAR or golf.

Onward and upward, dad.  Say hi to mom for me.

Simple Minds

I haven't had the extra time or presence of mind to do all of the stuff I normally get to do as regards my recovery.   That's not an excuse - that's a fact.  If your house is burning down and your kitty is inside you have my permission to miss your regular noon meeting and save the cat.

I got to a meeting today.  I'm having what passes for a Quiet Time in the morning.  You can fucking forget about sitting for a formal meditation - my insides are trying to jump out through my skin, probably an indicator that a formal meditation would be very helpful.  The 1000 lb phone, however, has been remarkably light.

I caught up with Willie right out of the chute this morning, and I knew what was going to be coming my way.  His brother died not long ago and when he called me during that event I had nuthin'. 

You're doing great.
This sucks.
Life can be hard.
Death is a pain in the ass.
Etc. etc. etc.

Good stuff for the dispenser but a little tough to swallow for the dispensee.  Dude should have recorded the tripe I was laying out, set the phone down this morning, and hit Play.

Not the point, is it?  The point is a willing ear stuck to the head of a trusted friend.  It's amazing the consistency of the advice, though, and how basic it is.  "Breathe" is very popular.  Look up and away.  Sit down for a minute and listen to the birds.  

Simple solutions for complicated minds.

Sudden or Slow

There was a man at one of my regular meetings in Vacation City - same sobriety class as me: '87 - who died suddenly of a massive heart attack recently.  He had suffered from a variety of health issues in the past but there was nothing in his current chart to suggest that such a drastic event was imminent.

Then there's dad . . .   

We all know what's coming down the road for him.  The timing is unclear but the result is not. The question, of course, is: which do you prefer?  The suddenness sucks - loved ones have no opportunity to prepare for the loss - but the lack of suffering would seem to be a big plus.  I can see the advantages of both conclusions but I bet if you told someone: "OK.  You're going to be trucking along, feeling fine, attending meetings, and Boom! just like that, you meet your maker" that the consensus would be that that's not a bad way to go.  No one wants to linger and suffer and lose control.

Although my friend was here one moment, gone the next, I could see that he was loved and appreciated, content, relatively happy, surrounded by people who cared about him and about whom he cared, enjoying life right up to the end.  

Not a bad way to go.

Seaweed: Barge Toter

Nature:  The innate characteristics of a thing; what something will tend by it own constitution, to be or do.
Nurture: The act of nursing or nourishing; tender care.

One of the benefits of my presence here in The Old City - maybe the only benefit - is that I've been able to give my sister a break from the mechanical, functional, practical stuff that has to be done - packing up things, calling people who need to be called, hefting crates, toting barges, swabbing decks.  I do think that women, generally speaking, are a little better than men at attending those who need attention.  My sister is a mother and I marvel at how she interacts with my dad - he definitely brightens up, becomes more animated when she's around.  I know that part of this is because she's been with him frequently over the last six months and I haven't.  I'm glad that my presence has freed her up to simply sit with him.

While I'm careful not to oversimplify The Program has taught me to keep things simple.

Calm Waiting

Vigorous: Physically strong and active.

Any action is easier than calm waiting.  Guys especially - alcoholic guys absolutely - want to do something, anything, instead of waiting and watching.  If I'm not involved in some vigorous action i feel like I'm failing. 

Maybe the action for me is being here.  Dad is pretty out of it this morning, at one point asking for birdseed so he could feed the birds, at another if I'd pop open a beer for him.  I've been reading prayers to him out of a book that his pastor left - these seem to help him but are definitely freaking me out.  He chimes in with a weak "Amen."  

I couldn't even get him to take a drink by pulling on a straw.  I did notice later, however, that he was able to clearly enunciated the word "Percocet."  I also noted that he was able to swallow a mashed up pill and drink half a glass of water to get it down.

Tangerine - orange - banana - apple.

I Yam What I Yam

To thine own self be true, redux.

Powerful concept, that.  I'm reflecting this morning on my behavior which I think is pretty good a lot of the time.  I realize it can improve, and I work on that, but only up to a point, especially where other people are concerned.  I'm not a slave to other people's expectations.  I consider them, honor them, try to meet them, but have taken no blood oath to live up to them.  I'm a work in progress and not a finished product but a lot of the building is done and finished and firmly in place and it ain't going to change drastically.

I yam what I yam, to quote Popeye.

I try to be caring and compassionate, to think of others before I think of myself, but I also try to be consistent and predictable.  I want people to trust me - I think it's comforting to get an expected result.

So there's this trip.  I truly am happy to be here, for me, for my father, and for my sister especially.  I bitch about spending the money to get from there to here but I spend it and I spend it without developing a resentment.  I'm cheap with myself but pretty generous with others.

It is what it is.

Into The Void, Redux

In the retirement home's independent living section there are a lot of different programs for the residents, the most popular being the music events.  I could hear the music burble up through the building yesterday, sort of 1930s or 40s sunny jazzy stuff, perfect for residents who grew up with that kind of sound.

I had to wonder what exactly would be going down in 25 years when I'm sitting in the audience. Will there be 50 year olds in costume, blasting out "Into The Void" by Black Sabbath, screaming into the audience at 5PM?  Hard to see it yet half the cars sold today have an old rock and roll song adapted for a commercial purpose.

Rocket engines burning fuel so fast, 
Up into the night sky so vast

Vodka

Boy, it can get messy at the end.  It's messy at the start, too, I guess, although a little more positive in tone as a general rule.  My father is not clear in his mind all of the time but he can clearly enunciate the word "vodka."

"Do you want some Coke?" I asked today.
"Vodka," he said.
"No vodka here, dad," I replied.  "Just Coke."
"I got vodka in my room," he pointed out.

I'm telling you the power of this disease is remarkable - the man calls my sister by my late mother's name most of the time but he could quickly locate the alcohol in his apartment if we took him there.

Yesterday he tried to climb out of bed.
"Where you headed, dad?"
"Happy hour," he said.  He knew it was Thursday and that it was four o'clock when the retirement home has a short happy hour, pouring weak bloody mary's, with a strict limit of two.
"It's Sunday, dad," I lied.  "No happy hour on Sunday."
That was good enough for him.  Not my fault any more that he couldn't get into the vodka.

At one point, out of nowhere, he came back from wherever he was, and remarked: "Oh, well, might as well drink vodka."

ZZZZZzzzzzz

There is nothing like eight hours of sleep - not-turning-over or moving sleep - to help me reframe the world.  I read somewhere once that the brain remains pretty active even while we sleep - organizing, postulating, solving - so that when we awake we often see yesterday's problems in a new light.  There really is something to the old aphorism: "Sleep on it."

I also saw how discombobulating it was to try to deal with a semi-coherent man with no frame of reference.  For instance, when dad wanted to get out of bed I tried to get him some help to get out of bed, a thing he shouldn't be doing.  The nurse kindly explained that he was very restless, that he didn't know what he wanted, and that as soon as he got out of bed he wanted to get right back in - she ignored his requests.  My sister was kindly blunt: "Dad, you're not getting out of bed."  This seemed to help, too - I guess dad figured that was that.

There was a man in Vacation City - not terribly old - who died suddenly of a massive heart attack.  Shocking and sad, but also, in the moment, the flurry,  with no frame of reference.  I get to go home and talk to his wife about the circumstances of his passing - happy, spiritually fit, loved, at peace - as compared to my father's end days.  Quite a contrast.

I've spent my whole recovery preparing for stuff like this.

Can't Believe It

So I plow through 2 hours of Vacation City traffic to get to the airport for my red-eye flight. Granted, I was in a big, comfy seat in the back of a shuttle so I was not personally doing any serious plowing and I slept most of the flight so maybe I'm being overly-dramatic about my trials and tribulations.  Shorty, at the last minute, texts me that he can indeed pick me up at The Old City airport and casually mentions that he has a car I can use when I'm home.  I shit you not when I say I spent at least a few hours dicking around online and on the phone trying to negotiate down the cost of a two week auto rental, to no avail.  I really spent a lot of time and emotional energy doing this.  Wasted a lot of time trying to arrange the world to my liking would be an apt analysis.

Ironically, as he drove down the road to an appointment and I sat in the front seat of the car he was loaning me typing up a snarky email about the fact that the car was a real piece of shit - greatly amusing myself - I was soon to find out that the battery of the car was indeed a piece of shit and would not start the car, proving that you can in fact choke on your own snark.

We got that sorted out and I swung by to see my father in his room in long-term rehab.  I am not exaggerating when I bandy the phrase "punched in the gut."  My sister indicated he was poorly but that preface did not prepare me for his physical appearance.  He is ill and he is not eating so he looked - and I am not exaggerating - like the pictures I've seen of individuals in work camps in the gulag.  He is very thin, his skin covered in bruises and sores, and he is dancing along the far edges of coherency.  I didn't know what he was talking about most of the time.

I hung in there for an hour and then fled to his apartment for some food and a nap - I was hungry and tired, the two HALT bookends, and not up to the scene.  I was shook up.  I was shook up.  I'm a pretty even-tempered guy, cool in tough situations, but this kicked my ass.  This was my father and he is clearly dying.  I hope he's dying because he sure doesn't look like he's having any fun.  I didn't want to be there.  I was perspiring heavily.  I didn't know what to do or what to say.  It was awful.

Tomorrow we meet with hospice to discuss end of life palliative care.  Can you believe it?  I cannot believe it.  

Old Friends

As is my practice I have checked in with several people concerning the dad scenario.  I find that I've gone back to those guys who have known me a long time because I believe the knowledge of me - and me with my family - accumulated over the years, is very helpful here.  But I've also spoken with both men and women who I've come to know over the last few years, and I've received counsel and information that has also been very helpful.

What I've gotten, generally, is support and a little, teensy bit of vague advice.  Mostly people have listened and encouraged me to follow my heart, to pray, to try and fit myself to be of maximum service to others.  These situations don't lend themselves to easy solutions and pat answers - you've got to kind of wing it and hope for the best.  It's like I'm driving on ice and the car starts to slip - there's only so much that can be done.  You steer into the slide or away from it - whichever is the right way to steer - and hope for the best.

This is as it should be.  I don't know what's best for you and you don't know what's best for me.

Costco

Regret:  Emotional pain on account of something done or experienced in the past, with a wish that it had been different; a looking back with dissatisfaction or with longing.  

A few years ago I was in The Old City and my mother expressed a desire to go to Costco.  She was, of course, too thrifty to pay for her own membership, preferring to piggyback on mine whenever she needed to go which was totally fine with me.  Costco is a big warehouse club where the standard technique is to cruise most of the aisles to load up on whatever staples catch your eye.  The place is quite large so it can take an hour or so to do this.  Costco isn't a place to go to pick up a thing or two - the idea is to stock up on some staples.

Fair enough, except that my mother treated it like the corner market.  She personally touched, evaluated, and analyzed every %$!! item in that huge %$!! store, calculating whether or not she could save a few cents on an item over the price she'd pay at a normal grocery store.  I'm impatient as hell on my most patient days when I'm dealing with people who don't try my patience so you can imagine how my frustration burgeoned and grew, like the mushroom cloud unfurling over a nuclear detonation.  I behaved well although I'll say that I finally got so frustrated that I went outside and made a few phone calls, an action that phased my mother not one iota.  She continued to plow through the store in slow-motion, caught in an existential molasses that only she could see.

I've thought about that over the last year.  I haven't obsessed over it but I haven't been able to shake a lingering sense that I could have done better.  My mother didn't want to sit down with me and share stories of what it was like growing up during WWII - she wanted to get some deals at Costco.  It makes one think about how actions today lead to memories tomorrow.

Big Dude Society

I'll tell you what's amazing: a middle-aged man who has a ton of other middle-aged men that he can talk to about anything.  This is a rare thing in our Big Dude society and I'm grateful to be able to dip into this well.  I've talked every day for the last several days with someone about the dad saga and with guys who know me well.  Today I had a long chat with a woman friend after my meditation meeting.  I've gotten all kinds of great advice but mostly I've gotten sober, balanced, measured, dispassionate perspective.  I feel pretty good about my behavior.  I'm in a tight spot where it's going to be hard to feel really good about everything but all in all I think I'm doing OK.

I'm on a plane in a couple of days for a two week stay in The Old City.  I'm not sure what's going to come of this trip - there's a lot of stuff I'd like to accomplish but I believe the main thing is to sit with my dad and to take some of the pressure off of my long-suffering sister.

What's That You Say?

Attentive:  Paying attention; noticing, watching, listening, or attending closely. 

was mulling over the whole dad situation and the whole sister situation a couple of days ago, thinking of calling one of my two sponsors while nourishing the sneaking suspicion that I probably wasn't going to call either of them - sometimes I just can't hork up the enthusiasm to do what would be good for me to do - when I saw an incoming call from Willie.  Perfect timing. As I had something going on he listened politely and attentively, as I like to think I do for him when the occasion arises, although "attentively" is a relative word for people like us who have poorly developed attention abilities.

I droned on about my family for a few minutes - vaguely discontented but not out-of-my-mind crazy.  When I was finished Willie started saying things like "family is hard" and "pray about it" and "I'm sure you'll do the right thing."  You know, the crap I'm always telling him.  It sounds better coming out of my mouth, directed at someone else, than it does landing with a clang in my own ears.

I interrupted him.  "This is what you've got?  I tell you all this and your response is 'It'll all work out?' "  We both laughed.  There is no doubt that most of the relief is in the telling of the tale, not in the solutions provided.  I don't know what's best for someone else and Willie doesn't know what's best for me.  We listen to each other, support each other, provide some general advice, some generic bromides, and then let the other guy loose to do what he thinks is best.  I honestly wasn't looking for an answer - I was looking for some perspective on the situation.  I do want feedback when I'm going postal over something but, gratefully, that doesn't happen all that much any more.  The calls function as more of a grounding process, a fact-finding mission, than a manual providing an answer.

You HAVE To Be Thinking About Me

I caught up with my sister this morning.  You know what?  She wasn't thinking about me.  For a guy who's main bit of advice is "No one is thinking about you" I have a lot of trouble with the concept.   A variation of this wisdom even came up at yesterday's meeting where we reminded each other that people aren't doing things to you, they're just doing things.  

I was convinced for the longest time that there was a diabolical, highly orchestrated system to frustrate me when I was driving - radio-controlled cars moving and dancing in a beautiful ballet whose sole function was to frustrate my forward progress on the road, to make it as vexing as possible.  

You know that guy who cut you off this morning?  Not.  Thinking.  About.  You.  I guarantee it.  The person who speaks too long at a meeting?  Not.  Thinking.  About.  You.

I have always found it weird that for a guy who doesn't spend much time thinking about anyone but himself I believe that everyone is thinking about me. 

That Damn Book

I swear that if you don't think you have anything to work on just go to a literature meeting. 
Our books are jam-packed with irritating stuff.

I'm currently frustrated because I'm so out of the loop as far as my father is concerned.  Things are happening and I'm not hearing about them, constantly putting me a couple of steps behind in the unraveling.  It's not that my input isn't properly valued - it's that my input, apparently, isn't an issue at all.  It's not that I'm being excluded from the process, as if I don't care about what's going on, it's that I'm ignored when I try to get some basic information.

What is it I say all the time?  You're not being helpful if no one wants the help that you're offering?  I always come back to the fact that I'm the guy that left the area.  If I wanted to be right in the thick of things I should have stayed in the thick of things.  I took a long hike SuperK yesterday on an island that sits about 25 miles offshore from Vacation City where a small fox the size of a house cat tried to drag her backpack into the bushes.  That's what I chose to do, not stay in close proximity to my often irritating relatives back in The Old City.  This is not bad and this is not good - this simply is.

So on Monday we read To The Family Afterward.  Today the group leader chose a few paragraphs from How It Works, another chapter in our annoying literature, which was very helpful because I only have the slightest familiarity with how anything works.  "The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong.  To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got.  The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore.  But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got."

The thing that resonates with me is that the solution to every problem that I have is within me. That doesn't mean that other people can't wrong me and that I won't get angry about it, it's that I get to choose how to respond to it.  I may not like what's going on but I can react to it well or I can react to it poorly.

Nobody is thinking about me.  Nobody is doing anything to me.  They're simply doing things.

Never and Always

Some tidbits from our Prayer and Meditation chapter with Editor's commentary . . . 

"When we retire at night, we constructively review our day.
Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid?"  You got that right.
"Do we owe an apology?"  Almost certainly.
"Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once?" You mean like one thing?  Not 50 or 160 things?
"Were we kind and loving toward all?" I don't think so.  Probably not.  Give me a break.
"What could we have done better?" Many, many things.
"Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time?"  This ridiculous statement implies that there is someone else I would be thinking about.
"Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life?"  The absurdity grows, gaining momentum, one preposterous thought following another.

". . . that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems.  We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only.  We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped."

I try to get some writing in every day for it is most helpful to my recovery.  This, however, is more along the lines of copying.  Transcribing, maybe.  It would be plagiarizing except I'm crediting the source of the material.

I was asked yesterday to price tickets for flights home.  My dad is battling a lot of stuff right now - C-diff, pneumonia, congestive heart failure, etc.  Scary stuff for someone who is eating and moving around, increasingly insurmountable for someone who isn't.

We lost a good member of The Fellowship last week to a sudden heart attack.  A guy he sponsored shared about how lost he felt, how isolated now that he has no one left that he can talk to.  THIS, my children, is why we keep expanding our contact list, why we have lots of people to talk to.  I was warned early on about the potential pitfalls of relying too much on one person, partially because that one person is fallible and may even falter himself and partially because we're all going to go at some point.  I felt sorry for the sponsee on multiple levels.

Keep fighting the good fight.  Don't smoke; don't drink or take illegal drugs; eat right; get some exercise; get enough sleep; nurture your spiritual life and also your social life; keep that brain engaged and active and challenged.  It's not a complicated list.  It's a list that surely doesn't contain any new stuff.

Some more copying . . . 
"We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends.  Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn't work.  You can easily see why."

Maybe YOU can easily see why . . . 

Routine or Rut? YOU Make the Call

Routine:  Ordinary, with nothing to distinguish it from all others; a set of normal procedures, often followed mechanically.

Rut: A dull routine.

I often ponder the tension between a good, very nice, healthy routine and plowing mindlessly along, blindly repeating an action over and over with no perspective on the action outside of some internal mechanism locked onto auto-pilot.  I have a tendency to both behaviors.  I will say that as I've gotten older and older and soberer and soberer that the whole rut thing is not as compelling as it used to be.

I will also say that I sort of "get" it.  My wife grew up in a tiny farming town where everyone had been there forever and they all knew each other very well.  My initial reaction when I hear of this kind of existence is to break out in a cold sweat.  However, I've heard her talk about the comfort that comes from the familiarity.  It almost sounds like being married - mostly good, sometimes not so good, secure in the knowledge that whatever is going on right now is all part of the ebb and flow of the relationship.  I know that my bestest, oldest friends get on my nerves from time to time.  I also know that it don't mean shit in the big scheme, that we'll grow close, drift off, come back together.  We have a history, man.

That being said I tend toward chaos.  I don't like to repeat things.  I have almost never gone back and revisited someplace I've traveled to, even if it's someplace I really like.  I get there, I'm frustrated and frantic because I don't know where I am or where I'm going or how things work and then I explore and get a handle on things and then I get bored and want to repeat the whole thing somewhere else.  And then there's this - I have a series of things that I repeat very consistently, deviating rarely: exercise, eating habits, meeting attendance.  So what am I?  A slave to routine or a discombobulated chaos seeker?

I like to think I've gotten to the place where I can see the beauty in both things.  If I went to a different meeting every day I'd never experience the frustration of hearing some irritating blowhard drone on and on about nothing anyone cares about but then I'd never get to develop strong friendships, either.  Such a conundrum, such a war of competing drives.

I have a friend who visits his in-laws on the same day every week.  Every week.  Now, he likes his in-laws and recognizes that these gatherings are very important to his spouse but still. . . .  I'd be inclined to say: "Uh, not this week, dear."  I think my wife would look at me and say: "Uh, maybe he doesn't want to do this and I'll go by myself every other week."  We do have this somewhat detached relationship vis-a-vis our respective families - her family is nuts so I don't have to spend any time with them (they don't like me anyway) and my family is nuts so she doesn't have to spend any time with them.  I've been to 46 of the 48 continental US states - just not the one where she was born - and she travels all the time - just not back to The Old City where my family is domiciled.  So I see the bias in my worldview.

Every week, though?

Agrico SuperPhosphate

Hang: To be or remain suspended.

Hanging on, hanging in there, hanging tough.  The whole concept of hanging onto or releasing one's self from The Big Picture makes me re-ponder the lesser hanging onto that revolves around Stuff.  I stay amazed, a year plus after my mother's death, at the ability she had to ascribe great worth to the strangest, most sentimental, seemingly worthless things.  And this from a woman who had a great certainty as to what was Coming Next.  She just kept things, all manner of things, almost everything. 

I'm sure I've told the story about asking for some of my grandmother's old furniture, stored in mom's basement, moldering, deteriorating, increasingly buried in thicker, more impenetrable layers of dust.  SuperK and I had bought our first small house and needed some things to fill out the space.  We were, you see, in the midst of our own headlong pursuit of possessing more things. The answer was invariably no.  I asked for a while, my annoyance growing with leaps and bounds, until I finally figured out that I wasn't going to be able to pry this stuff from her surprisingly tough hands.  She always had a place for the furniture sometime and someplace in the future, undeterred by the fact she had been in the same house for almost 60 years.  We moved on, bought stuff to fill the spaces that didn't have any stuff in them, bought a bigger house that required more stuff, then a bigger house yet with still more stuff required.  Eventually we got tired of being responsible for all of the stuff and moved into smaller and smaller places, shedding stuff as we descended.

After we had moved 2618 miles away my mother, finally downsizing herself, started offering up these large pieces of furniture.  I honestly didn't know what to say.  I pointed out the great expense in shipping something to Vacation City, an expense transcending the value of the shipped thing.  I reminded her that we had already gotten rid of most of our stuff.  She remained undeterred until I finally said: "OK, mom, we'll take that piece of stuff.  Go ahead and ship it out."  Needless to say no stuff made the trek.

After she died I helped sort through the much diminished pile of stuff in my folks' apartment. Lots of junky stuff survived the downsizing transition.  Being a writerly type I was pleased to find stacks and stacks of little notepads and notebooks in a drawer.  While a lot of them were the standard give-aways found in hotel rooms there were also a lot of odd, ancient items.  Currently, I'm using a tiny book from Agrico, a company advertising something called "18% Normal Superphospate."  I flipped to the back cover today which had a calendar from 1949.  I discovered that the advertised product, after some research, dated to 1944.  The company itself is based in South Africa.

So my mother had possessed this notepad for 57 years.  I should point out that I'm using it.  I wonder what she had planned to do with it?  I wish I had asked her.

Feedback

I had a nice chat yesterday with an Earth Person who has known me for - I hate to say it - 45 years.  The subject was my father, a man he's qualified to critique.  I am terrifically blessed with a spouse that listens when I need to talk; I am similarly blessed with a lot of men in The Program who do the same; and I have this great writing outlet which makes me look at stuff logically and dispassionately.  That being said it was a relief to be able to bounce my behavior off yet another sympathetic ear.  I got helpful, thoughtful feedback but mostly the benefit is hearing myself talk out loud because I usually do what I want to do whatever the advice.  But from time to time all of us need to be able to say: "This is what I'm doing," hoping for a positive response but willing to learn from a negative one.

His dad - a longtime member of The Fellowship - died not long ago.  I wanted to hear how his dad felt about dying.  It has been a trip watching people close to me pass away, some peacefully, a few kicking and screaming, others inhabiting spaces all levels in between.  I think that the jist of it was that his father was prepared globally, spiritually, strategically to die but that the end snuck up on him a little too quickly, that he wanted to stick around for just a bit longer, to say some final goodbyes.  I felt really good about that.  I expected nothing less from him.

And here I am juggling my dad's decline.  I don't know.  I just don't know.

FUN Seaweed

Fun:  Enjoyable; amusing; whimsical; flamboyant.  (Ed. Note: WTF?  I wouldn't put those four adjectives together to describe anything).
Pleasure: Gladness; satisfaction; gratification; happiness.

Here's what alcoholism does: It robs the afflicted of every last speck and mite of pleasure in life. That awful fact sucks big time but to make it worse it convinces the afflicted that it's the only sure source of enjoyment left.  Causes misery, promises pleasure.  That's quite the party trick.  That's quite the magic act.

How often have we said: "It's the only thing I have left."

As I struggle with the belief that I do indeed know what's best for everyone and everything in the universe, I justify the nagging wish that my dad would throw in the proverbial towel by my estimation that he is navigating from one miserable moment to the next.  I think alcohol, the rapacious creditor, has placed a margin call on my father's psyche.  The Book says we eventually reach a point where we can't imagine a life with alcohol and we can't imagine a life without it.  That's quite a point to reach.  The "jumping off point."  The point of no return - can't get there from here but can't make it back home, either.

I know that I had personally traded the pleasure of living for the fun of drinking, or what I imagined with fun.  I told someone at a meeting once that I was just a guy who liked to party. "You're not partying, Seaweed," he said.  "You're just drinking."  That's quite a distinction.  It made me sit up right straight and in a hurry, too.

I take a lot of satisfaction in my life today.  I wouldn't call it a fun life.  I would call it a satisfying, calm, centered life.  I'm not sure everyone gets that.  I have a cousin who always asks me: "So what are you doing for FUN?!"  Well, I meditate and read and listen to people when they talk to me?  That doesn't sound as good as taking a hit of acid and then riding roller coasters.  That sounds FUN!  I'm happy-ish because I maneuver through life with a minimum of fuss, with an ability to take it as it comes, to not fight everything and everyone.

For those of you not in The Program I do have to admit that I plagiarized half of what I wrote today.  It's good stuff.  It's hard to improve on it.

Death Metal

Death:  The cessation of life and all associated processes.

I caught up with my sister yesterday for her boots-on-the-ground report on my father.  It's grim as most reports of aging, active alcoholics tend to be: not eating, not getting out of bed, fluid around the lungs, shortness of breath requiring oxygen, GI infection common among the old and infirm who have spent a lot of time in the hospital or rehab units.  She is under the impression that the hospital may not be spending a huge amount of time trying to extend things with him.  I don't mean that to sound uncharitable or to accuse the hospital of being unethical, either, but rather to suggest that maybe it's not a bad thing for our health care system let someone go who has clearly, deliberately, willfully thrown in the towel.  If it would be better for him to get out of bed and move around and he was making an effort to accomplish this, that would be one thing.  If he doesn't want to get out of bed then I can hardly fault the hospital staff for not wanting to take time away from patients who are trying to get better to wheedle and cajole his stubborn ass.

She spent a few uncomfortable-for-her minutes talking about the nagging voice in her head that keeps suggesting the best thing would be for him to let go and catch up with mom in the Great Rehab In The Sky.  I was able to ease her mind a bit, I hope, by telling her that my feelings were the same and that I had to address them every single morning during my Quiet Time.  I don't wish death upon anyone no matter how strongly I feel that a release from a clearly unpleasant existence would be the best for that person.  That is DEFINITELY not my call.  I do ask that I be the best son that I can be and that my father has peace of mind and spiritual contentment. Whether or not he's ready to let go is between him and his Higher Power.  Some of us are ready and some of us are not.

I believe that our experience in The Program helps a lot in these cases.  All of us know the helpless feelings that arise when we watch someone making lousy, life-threatening choices.  We wish we could ease the pain while knowing that we cannot, and that it isn't our burden to deprive people of experiences that they may have to go through to get to a better place, especially when we know that they may not make it back to us alive.  I truly believe that I had to go through everything I went through to make it here.

More will be revealed.

I'm Not A Cheater

Consistent:  Of a regularly occurring, dependable nature.

Mulling over the stuff on our anniversary (or birthday, depending on where you live) coins.  I get one every year and then promptly lose it.  My 27 year anniversary coin is currently in Bergen, Norway, to the great amusement of the young couple that rented us a couple of rooms for a couple of nights.  One side states: "Recovery - Unity - Service," and god, I hope that's what it really says because I'm not going to Bergen to get my coin back just so I can verify something that no one is going to bother to check, anyway.  The other side suggests: "To Thine Own Self Be True," which I really like despite the fact that we use language that would be more appropriate in Victorian England.  I live in Vacation City, for god's sake.  How about: "Be True to Yourself?" 

Anyway, my sister is back in The Old City and I am firmly out of the loop in what's going on with my father.  For a guy who almost never makes a mistake I do spend some time each day reviewing my day to make sure I correct any mistakes I may have made - as rare as this may be -  and I've done this regarding my behavior with my father.  I feel like a jerk some of the time when I mull over how I behave, sort of cold and calculating and clinical.  I feel like I'm forced into a position where I have to deal with errant children or insane people. I feel like the bad guy when I tell someone: "No, you can't have candy for dinner" and, believe me, I'm a guy who can totally get behind the candy-for-dinner movement.  I have the cavities and crowns to prove it.

The point is - if there's a point in here somewhere - that I don't think my behavior surprises people any more.  I think I'm consistent.  People don't say: "Wow.  I didn't see that coming" when they're discussing my behavior.  I'm not saying that everyone likes my behavior or that my behavior is unfailingly, unflinchingly exemplary but rather that it's consistent.  I have an internal code of ethics that I adhere to

I listened to an interview with a college basketball coach yesterday who had been temporarily suspended for breaking some rule or other.  In a national press conference that was being recorded by thousands of digital recording devices he spent some time explaining that his suspension wasn't for cheating - it was for breaking the rules.   He did this with a straight face.  I bet the needle on a lie detector wouldn't have budged when he was saying this ridiculous crap. 

I didn't cheat - I broke the rules.  That is priceless.  I'm going to try to convince my dad that he should maybe not drink vodka in the morning if he doesn't want to be in the position of waiting for a test report?  I don't think so.

Terrible, Terrible Things

Terrible: Dreadful; causing alarm and fear

The conversations with my father are getting shorter and shorter.

"How are you today, pop?" I asked this morning.

"Terrible," he said.

"Pretty sore?" I said.  I keep my sentence structures short and sweet.  He doesn't want me to talk to him as a general rule and he has no interest in talking to me.  I'm not there directly solving what he considers problems primarily because I consider these alleged problems solutions to problems.  I'm frankly happy he's in a hospital bed.  He's not drinking and he's not falling down.  Hate to say it but that's about as good as it gets right now.

"That and it just takes forever to get anything done," he replied.  "I spend all my time waiting around."

I do not comment directly to this kind of bitching.  I do not reason with people who are basing their position on specious and illogical reasoning.  It reminds me of the anecdote in The Book that talks about a guy hitting himself in the head with a hammer and then complaining about the headache.  It reminds me of my vociferous objections whenever I got a speeding ticket: illegal speed trap; I always drive that fast on that road; everyone else was driving that fast; the radar actually got the guy in front of/next to/behind me; and so on and so forth, conveniently ignoring the fact that I was . . . you know . . . speeding.

What an awful, slow spiral down.  When I get off the phone I take a minute to think of Kenner and his last days in hospice.  I need that juxtaposition.  I need to remember how my choices can lead to different results.

Boom, Boom, Down Goes the Dad

I've heard estimates about the percentage of the population that is affected by the behavior of an alcoholic - either a family member, close friend, or work associate.  The number escapes me but I know it was unbelievably high.  I think the statistics in the US suggest that 8% of us have a serious alcohol problem.  That's like 30 million people.  That's a lot of people.  I'm not even going to get into how much time the cops spend on alcohol-related crimes or how many auto accidents are the result of alcohol impairment.  There is no way that any other disease is so costly to the country than alcohol.

I think often of the end days of SuperK's father.  Although he died of emphysema and not alcoholism he was definitely one of us, and he was sober at the end only because he couldn't get his hands on anything to drink.  What I remember is hearing about the mental and spiritual anguish suffered by someone who had spent his entire life doing exactly what he wanted to do and then was confronted with his own mortality.  He wanted to turn the battleship around, to feel connected to people and to a god, but it was a big boat that had been steaming ahead under full throttle for years and years, with lots and lots of momentum.  It's tough to expect people who have been subjected to selfishness to rally around at the end.

I spoke to dad today.  He's still in the hospital where he's getting physical therapy because he's so unsteady on his feet.  What a waste of time that is - there are professional athletes with magnificently toned bodies who are unsteady on their feet after a bottle of vodka.  He'll be released soon into a rehab unit where they'll give him more therapy and feed him some real food so he'll improve slightly, get to a place where he can go home and drink some more and fall down and go to the hospital and so on and so forth.  He even brought up leaving his apartment and moving into an assisted living facility.  I can't believe he hasn't broken a hip or conked his head on the corner of a table yet.

We drunks are resourceful in our ability to deny, deny, deny.  I know my drinking caused problem after problem which I dutifully, rigorously, implausibly blamed on people, places, and things, anything but my drinking.  I wanted to drink.  Damned be the consequences.  I felt remorseful about my drinking and the resulting problems but some more alcohol helped me deal with that.

Sigh.