I Had to Look Within
On June 1, 1998, a close friend committed suicide. On June 7, I delivered a homily in church about the deceased and my overall experience with this. Since then, I have been practicing Step 11 with all my heart, and something wonderful has been born out of a tragedy.
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When I hit bottom on May 4, 1985, it was not the low point of my life, no far from the low I had experienced as a child.
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As I looked back to my childhood, I discovered something that I had never considered. When I hit bottom on May 4, 1985, it was not the low point of my life, no far from the low I had experienced as a child. For as a child, I had to live in my father’s hell. He was a no-bottom drunk, as opposed to the “low-bottom” and “high-bottom” drunks we tend to describe ourselves as. No-bottom means he never found his. He died, and John Barleycorn had a hand in his death.
As I remember it, my father deserted us when I was five. He just left, and gave us no word on where he went, or when he might be back. He sent us no money, and we had no clue as to his whereabouts. My mother divorced him when I was seven, and we assumed he would never be back.
He came back that year, or the year after. I can remember my mother opening the door, and hearing him exclaiming “Didn’t you think I was coming back?”. His face was familiar to me, but I couldn’t place him. I took my mother on the side and said “Who is that guy?”. I can only imagine the hurt my mother felt at the question.
He moved in with us, a full fledged alcoholic. He stole money from my mother’s wallet (drinking money), came home drunk every night, beat us. We had the police over several times. He overdosed on morphine caplets one night, and the fireman carried me down to my aunt and uncle’s apartment (they lived downstairs). The apartment became a wreck. My father left a burning cigarette in the ashtray and it fell down into an upholstered chair and caused a minor fire. It destroyed the chair, but nothing else (the fire department came fast). But the landlord was fed up. Among the screaming and yelling at all hours of the night, the police, the paramedics, the fire, the neighbors in an uproar, he told my mother she had to get out when the lease was up.
So my mother took an apartment in a “better” neighborhood. When I was 10, we moved to an apartment within spitting distance from the elevated tracks. It was a pit. We naively thought my father would wander into a new life. Then after a few days I looked out the window and saw him walking up the street. I gasped and told my mother. Sure enough, he moved in with us again. And it would be nearly two years of the same thing: Beatings, suicide attempts, fighting, screaming and yelling, police visits.
My own circumstances were these: I was an only child. There were no siblings with whom I could share the pain. I had no friends in school. I was a Christian in a primarily Jewish area. I was younger, fat, alone, poor in a mostly well-to-do area, and developing gynecomastia. (I won’t explain the word, you can look it up.) I was teased and tormented. I hated school and did everything I could not to go. At my house, the “friends” I had were kids who, strangely enough, found themselves under similar circumstances: Alcoholic fathers and/or mothers, no role models, and most of them hardened like me. My so-called friends were breaking into my apartment stealing my things, such as the train set I got in happier times, Christmas decorations, etc.
My father finally died on March 2, 1965, 17 days before he reached his 42nd birthday, 17 days before I reached my 12th birthday (yes, we shared the same birthday). I never cried. There was no reason to. He had created a life so miserable for my mother and me that his death could only have been a blessing.
When I hit bottom in 1985, and ever since that time, I never considered how low I actually had gone many years before picking up that first drink. But with the recent death of Jeff P., the visit to my father’s grave, and the homily, I have given pause to my history, given careful consideration to my present circumstances and conditions, and given several prayers of gratitude to my Higher Power.
I have a bad back, partly the consequence of being hit by a car when I was 7, partly the onset of sciatica, partly the onset of arthritis. There are days when I need a cane, other days when I need a walker, to get around. Thankfully there are days when I don’t need either. On those days I bend over in the shower, clean between my toes and say “Thank you God, for allowing me to do this today”.
The events of the past three weeks have given me cause to say “thank you” for lots more. For now I can see that God has given me, in sobriety, my children, my wife, my home, my job, my friends, my family, and an abundant life. Not perfection, but so much more than I ever had, particularly as a child.
More than that, I can now look upon my children and my wife and honestly say that I am more than just grateful. I can be a father and a husband, more than my father ever was. And I am thankful for it.
All this, and all I did was not pick up the first drink, go to meetings, get a sponsor, work the steps, and pray. Thank you God. Thank you AA. And thank you folks of the fellowship, yes you reading this, for what you have done for me. And thank you Jeff P. I am sorry you had to make the ultimate sacrifice to educate me, but am grateful for the education all the same.
Sox
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