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?

Lost In Space

Loss: The hurtful condition of having lost something or someone.

So my sponsor makes the much deserved and much desired transition from Here to The Big Meeting In The Sky.  My mother passes peacefully as well, not six hours later.

Freaky.  Not a day I'll forget soon.

I'm upset in a diffuse way but not devastated although I'm sure that things will intensify once I'm boots-on-the-ground in The Old City.  I got to talk for many hours with Ken as his cancer made its grim march through his major organ systems.  He was at peace and ready to move on .  I learned a great deal and grew a great deal spiritually during this process, talking openly about death and dying and love and what comes next.  One of my greatest life adventures.  It just goes to show me that I can always be passing along a spiritual message no matter what my circumstances are.

My mama suffered a devastating injury from which she never really recovered.  I didn't get to speak a single word with her after this event but I knew she was pain-free, spiritually and emotionally secure.  She had been having many small ischemic events over the last few months and I worried about her long term well-being - I believe the choice wasn't going to be between recovery and death but somewhere more shadowy and indistinct.  I don't think anyone wants to hang on in a nursing home, greatly diminished.  That being said her passing on may have been a blessing in disguise.

Ken went to a lot of funerals for other residents of his retirement community.  I commented on this once and he replied: "You know, Seaweed, at my age there are a lot more funerals than christenings."

I'll feel the loss of both of these people and I'll feel the loss in different ways.