Dealing with Death

At last night's meeting, the chairperson talked through some grief he was feeling overwhelmed by...  Apparently, his first sponsor from years back had died this week. He said that this guy had saved his ass many years ago when he was working as a counselor in the treatment facility the chairperson had gone to when he began getting sober. He paused and with tears leaking out of his eyes, shared with us that he had come to love this man and missed him greatly now.

Everyone became reverent in the presence of this gut wrenching emotional experience. When he finished telling his story, he asked us to talk about how--in sobriety--we had dealt with the death of a loved one.

I shared how I too had been helped by such a man when I got sober. It was a man that had gotten sober two days before I was born and who had died some 14 months after I had gotten sober. I spent a lot of time with this man, particularly in the last five months of his life.  Regularly, for three hour periods of time in the early mornings, two to three times a week. When I was with him those mornings, we didn't talk much then even though he would wake while I was there for short periods of time. Usually, he'd ask me how I was doing, how my wife and I were doing, how my son was doing in his recovery. I'd help him pee into a bottle. I would call the nurse if he pooped.  I would hold his hand when his body would some times shake with seemingly unbearable pain.  Once, I thought he was going to break my hand.  When that particular spell was over, I asked Earle if he was OK.  He looked at me with one of his patented smiles and said, "Well, for awhile there I was in a lot of pain.  But it's gone now."

I was holding his right hand the night he died. His daughter was holding the other. They were gnarly old arthritic hands.  None of the fingers could straighten out.  I think they were both molded into the shape of his hands grabbing onto the hands of newcomers.  His hands would always drift over to the newcomer's hands: welcoming them, giving them hope that it was indeed possible to stay sober.

I wasn't scheduled to be with him that night. But through a series of mishaps and tardiness, I went over to see Earle that night because there was absolutely nothing working for me that night and I knew being with him, if only for a few minutes, would make everything right. And it was.

I often say that I have three sponsors, two of them are alive and I talk to the dead one more than the live ones. People think I'm joking. I'm not. Earle exists in some sort of virtualized form within and without me. Most of my life struggles and subsequent awakenings are influenced greatly by what comes from his virtualized presence. Suppose it may be just a memory, but it seems far more.

I then shared that I used to watch a TV show called The Twilight Zone where the stories always involved the writer taking a human fantasy/hope that we all seem to have at times which are basically rooted in the belief that "if only such and such" would happen, then everything would be right for us in our world. If only everyone were like me.... If only people would just tell the truth... If only people didn't die.... The storyline would then live out that fantasy and demonstrate the falseness of our dream. The truth was always that our world would be Hell if we got our wishes.

What would life be without death? Ultimately, I think that life would then be devoid of all meaning and of all beauty and of all love and of all true joy. There is no such thing as life without death. Thank God.  Earle taught me that before, during and after his own death.  I encouraged the chair not to run from this experience.  To grieve.  To love.  To remember.  To share.  To cry.  To laugh.  Most especially, to listen within.

Take care!

Mike L.