The "One Day At a Time" is Always Today

During the month of June at the Concord Fellowship, whenever the secretary would ask if anyone was celebrating a AA birthday during the month of June, many of us spent most of the month egging on one of our old timers to raise his hand because in June he was going to be celebrating his 29th year of sobriety. Bob always shook his head No though, because he didn't believe in celebrating his birthday until it happened. Until the end of June, his birthday was only a possibility. He'd gotten into a good "one day at a time" habit and he was going to stick with it since it had worked "well over" 28 years.

This last Sunday night I got a call from an AA friend and he told me that Bob (Robert Adams) had been killed that morning when a car ran a red light in Concord, CA and hit Bob as he was crossing the intersection on his motorcycle. I believe this was the day, June 29th, Bob finally raised his hand to let us celebrate his miraculous feat of 29 year's worth of "one day at a time" sobriety. I'm just now getting over the shock of Bob's death. There are a couple of people around here who I know are in the last stages of the dying process and I while I'll be sad on their passing, I won't be shocked. Bob's death shocked me. My initial reaction was that this death was wrong. Untimely. Unfair.

I wanted to blame someOne, but there's no one for me to blame. I've positioned myself so that theologically and philosophically, there's really no one to blame, certainly not God. I espouse a belief system in which God, if God exists, does not "do" anything. In my view, God's been resting since he got Creation going. If I'm not mistaken, this view is shared by one of the writers of Genesis. For me, God's not a puppeteer up in the sky who pulls strings to make "good" things happen or to prevent "bad" things from happening. Therefore, God doesn't cause a man to run a red light and kill another man....and I feel no inclination to try and conjure up some divinely justified rationale for God's making this death happen. I simply don't believe God had anything to do with what happened Sunday morning, other than simply and lovingly "being there."

But Sunday night, I wanted to take a short vacation from my theological belief system. Just one drink of blame and anger toward a higher power or anyone else. Just one drink... Blame toward the driver of the car: was this guy drunk at 9:30am on a Sunday morning? Not out of the realm of possibility for an alcoholic, to be sure. And if he was drunk, was this some sort of cosmic humor where a drunk drunk kills a sober drunk of 29 years? Or was this guy just driving his car and distracted by some out of control event in his life, such that he just didn't notice that the light had turned red? In neither case, could I work up satisfactory anger because I found myself identifying myself as the perpetrator in either scenario: it could have been me, drunk or just simply distracted. Now, there's a part of me who wants to comfort the guy who killed my friend Bob. I hope our paths cross some day.

Then I turned my anger toward Bob: damn him for riding that goddamned motorcycle! They're unsafe and provide you with no protection from the "givens" of driving on our streets and highways. What was he doing there at that time of day anyway! Turns out, that Bob had done that morning what he almost always did every morning: he went to his 6:30am meeting at the Concord Fellowship, where he probably came in just a little late, where he probably sat down and joked with those around him (while seeming to rudely ignore the secretary's introduction to the meeting...OK, a little resentment there from a Concord Fellowship secretary!) and most likely not raise his hand to share. I assume that he raised his hand when they asked if anyone was celebrating a AA birthday. Finally!

After the meeting, I hear that he then joined a impromptu group of AA friends at the local Denny's and had a "meeting after the meeting." I know there much have been much laughter and probably some serious talk about something important to someone. Bob then left Denny's not to go home to his wife, but to head to another meeting nearby where a guy he knew, and I think who Bob sponsored at some time, was going to be the speaker. This guy, Lance, had been around AA for many years but has had a hard time staying continuously sober until recently. Lance now has over three years sober (I think) and Bob wanted to be supportive of Lance that morning because Bob did things just like this all the time. That was why Bob was crossing that intersection Willow Pass and Gateway Blvd. at 9:30am Sunday morning.

So I can't even get mad at Bob for being there that morning. Even his riding the motorcycle was Bob's way of being able to do all that he did on a limited retiree's budget, a retiree who, by the way, never seemed to completely stop working some jobs to make end's meet for his family. I believe that Bob was a penny pincher because he wanted to squeeze the life out each day. He and his wife had just taken a vacation trip together with this penny pinched money. With this money that he'd saved by driving that goddamned gas efficient motorcycle.

Bob was a great man. An honorable man. One of the ever growing list of honorable people I've come to know and love since getting sober. These honorable people attempted to live each day of their life as fully as humanly possible. They seemed to take nothing for granted and gave away everything of real value to any suffering alcoholic who crossed their path. Many saw Bob as someone who laughed a lot, but also someone who sometimes got very angry at things. Bob would sometimes be in a meeting at the Concord Fellowship, which I oftentimes refer to as the "Wild West of AA" due to it's unseemly and wild environment and interchanges, and if he thought the members had crossed some "line" in terms of behaving or not behaving in such a manner that would be helpful to a suffering alcoholic, Bob would raise his hand and not even wait to be called on: he was just take us all to task for our failure to carry the message of AA to a suffering alcoholic.

That was a line not to be crossed when Bob was present and, by God, he was here to let us know that we'd crossed it. Failure to carry the AA message was not to be tolerated! Now, personally, I thought Bob was usually about two or three weeks late in noticing that we'd crossed that imaginary line, but he always seemed to identify the most effective moment to raise our consciousness. I always loved to watch him explode, even when it was directed toward me, with love for AA and the suffering alcoholic. I think that's because it was Bob being most passionate and on fire with love.

I was telling my wife about Bob Sunday night, sharing a little bit about what I knew and was going to miss about this man who falls into her category of one of those "strangers I hang out with" in AA.

One thing that I knew Bob struggled with all of the time I knew him was the issue of death. Bob grew up in a world and culture where God was all powerful and whatever happened in life was "God's will." Some years ago, Bob's son and daughter-in-law were having a baby and the baby died at or just before birth. I don't know the details of the death, but I do know that this event devastated Bob for a long long time. Probably until last Sunday morning. He just couldn't reconcile his belief that God was love with the fact that God was ultimately in control of all things and if God was in control of all things, then how could he allow this innocent baby to die before ever having a chance to live or to be loved, especially by Bob. This death tore Bob apart. We talked about it several times, and no matter how much I tried to offer Bob an alternative view of God, he had a hard time letting go of the God of his fathers and forefathers. Not long ago, Bob's son and daughter-in-law were having another baby and the possibility of another death was utmost on Bob's mind. I don't think he could have survived another innocent death. Luckily, that wasn't what happened and Bob was able to hold and love his grandbaby.

I told my wife that I'm not at all sure Bob reconciled with God before his death on Sunday, but my hope was that maybe Bob would now finally be able to vent all his anger and resentment out directly to God and could come to peace with this everpresent death issue. My wife, you got to love her, replied back to me that maybe Bob would be better served by taking this opportunity to hold and to love his first grandchild for the first time....and to let his anger toward God die a timely death. My wife is an amazing woman who simply doesn't give an alcoholic, sober or drunk, a break! And that's without Alanon!

I'm missing Bob a lot right now. I didn't go to the 6:30am Concord Fellowship meeting this morning because I thought I'd rather blog this stuff out while it was still fresh. And I wanted this time alone with my memories of Bob and my grief over his death. While he may be dead and gone, I still have the ability to sense him in my heart and in my mind. Bob's going to be in some wonderful stories of mine that I'll use to help other suffering alcoholics! That's how I handled Dr. Earle's death five and a half years ago. It worked then, it will most likely work now. Today. One day at a time. Today.

Take care!

Mike L.

The Trick: Giving It Away!

At this morning's 6am meeting at the Lafayette Hut, the chair mentioned an experience he had when he first got sober two years ago when someone gave him a 24 Hour chip after a meeting and how much that meant to him ever since. It brought to mind two of my favorite "chip stories":

The first happened toward the end of my first year of sobriety, sometime before Dr. Earle went into the hospital and when he was still able to attend meetings on a regular basis. As I've mentioned before, Earle got sober June 15, 1953 and two days following, I was born. Since I was 48 when I got sober, I believe this story happened sometime after June 2002, when Earle would have picked up his 49 year chip. It was then that Earle decided to give me and another guy, Rich (who really was like a son to Earle and who had a couple of more years sober than me...but who had known Earle for much longer than I had...) two of the 48 year chips that he'd received the prior year. I suppose that knew that he meant a great deal to the both of us and that we were both simpletons-enough to find this gift of a 48 year chip really a big deal!

Anyway, I carried that 48 year chip around in my pocket for months, right next to my cheap plastic 6- or 9-month chips. I'd often reach into my pocket while walking and hold on to the 48 year chip as some sort of talisman or lucky charm. It was thick and metal and had a heavy feel to it. It also always reminded me of Earle and of some "Earleism" (e.g., "Self-disclosure is the currency of AA: it's the thing of value that we exchange with one another." or "We desperately, desperately, need one another!!!"). But I also felt somewhat self-conscious about having this 48 year chip in my pocket when I only had 6 or 9 months! I mean, what if I got run over by a bus one day and killed. Someone would find a 9 month AND a 48 year sobriety chip...probably give that to my wife who would then give it to someone in AA who would then announce to the group that Mike must have been going around pretending to have 48 years of sobriety when he really only had 9 months! Come on, give me a break! That would have meant that I got sober when I was 9 months old! But that's the sorts of thoughts I have sometimes, even now.

The self-conscious thought continued though until one day I was attending an NA meeting, which has never been a real part of my recovery practice. I was attending the NA meeting though because at that meeting my son Pat was chairing and he was also celebrating his second year clean... I almost said "clean and sober" but Pat doesn't say that: he's clean. Alcohol is really just a drug like any other drug. But I digress. I listed to Pat's chair and there's simply nothing more moving to a father with one and a half year's sobriety listening to his seventeen year old son tell his story and then receive a two year chip. During the time for chairing, I never felt so at a loss for words in my life. The only thing that seemed to come close to expressing how proud I was of Pat was to reach in my pocket and pull out Earle's 48 year chip. Pat had fallen for Earle also and even spend one night with me in the hospital sitting with Earle during one of my "Earle watch" commitments... Pat slept most of the time, but he was there for Earle nonetheless.

I knew that Pat would appreciate it, so I raised my hand and told Pat that I was giving him something now that meant a great deal to me: Earle's 48 year sobriety chip. I loved Earle a great deal and thought of him daily since his death. I wanted Pat to have Earle's chip. But I told him that if he lost Earle's chip, I'd kill him! Everyone laughed, including Pat....but I told him I was serious! Then I laughed. About a year later I was looking for something in Pat's room --- it looked typical: like a tornado had just blown through the room. I noticed a wooden box on Pat's bookshelf and opened it up (respecting another's privacy has never been one of my strong points!) and found all of Pat's clean chips and 24-hour NA key holders. There were many of them--it took him 5 months before something clicked and before the clicking happened, he wasn't able to get much more that 5-10 days continuous clean time. Anyway I dug through the chips with my finger and at the bottom of the box was Earle's 48 year chip. I smiled, glad that I didn't have to kill my son.

I was just about to tell you my second special chip story, when I realized that I've already blogged about it!!!

http://mikelrecovery.blogspot.com/2008/02/gift-that-never-stops-being-given.html

I'm so glad that I hadn't already told the one I just told today!!! I sometimes do that!

Take care!

Mike L.

The Gift That Never Stops Being Given

When I got sober my 15yr old son, just 5 months sober himself, gave me a 24 hour chip that meant everything to me. It was metal, not cheap plastic like most other early recovery chips. It had the Serenity Prayer on one side and an engraving of a butterfly on the other. I carried it in my pocket whereever I went, next to my current month chip. A few nights ago, something happened in an AA meeting where this gift of the 24 hour chip came back into my life.

Before telling that story, I need to say that my son has always been supportive of me and my recovery. He expressed no anger at the fact that I'd been hiding my drinking during the first 10 months of his recovery, oftentimes my drinking was done between the time I dropped him off at his NA/CA/AA/MA meetings and picking him up afterwards. In fact, his first reaction when I came clean with him about my problem was, "Gee, Dad! This is great! We're both addicts!!" I remember shaking my head with a slight smile and replying that, "Well, Pat, I'm not all that pleased to be an addict with you, but I am extremely happy to be in recovery with you." I never got to be in recovery with my dad (who'd died from alcoholism some years before this...), but I was overjoyed to be able to do this with my son.

So this 24 hour chip meant a lot to me. Some months later, before having a year sober, I'd been watching a young woman come in and out of the rooms, really struggling with staying sober. But I was always struck by her persistence and courage. She'd always come back, raise her hand and disclose that she was once again in her first 30 days. She'd make progress and then disappear. And then come back. One night, she came into one of the meetings which held birthday celebrations on the last Tuesday of the month and raised her hand again as being in the first 30 days...

And because it was birthday night, when they called out asking if anyone wanted to pickup a 24 hour chip, she raised her hand and went up to receive her chip. But the box contained no 24 hour chips and the secretary was embarrassed to say that there was no 24 hour chip in the chip box. I then realized that I needed to give my 24 hour chip to this woman and I stood up to do so... As I handed it to her, I told her my son gave this chip to me and it meant everything in the world to give it to her this night. My only hope was that one day she'd get to experience some taste of the joy I felt right now by getting to a point in time where she could give it to someone else who needed it.

Over the years since, I've seen this woman stay sober for longer periods of time, but then disappear again. I hadn't seen her for quite awhile until last Friday night when just as the meeting was beginning she walked into the room. When they asked for newcomers to raise their hands, I noticed that she did not raise her hand with the others.... I smiled inside thinking that she'd "gotten it."

The topic of the meeting turned out to be "what do you do to help the newcomer"? I told some of my favorite newcomer stories which attempted to explain my basic approach which is one of trying to be kind and gentle with those who crawl into these rooms. And then I told the story of my son giving me his 24 hour chip and then my subsequent giving of the same 24 hour chip to a young woman who was struggling with staying sober....and that tonight that gift came walking into this very room sober. To date, there'd been no greater gift received than to see her walk into a meeting of Alcoholic's Anonymous.

After the meeting, she walked up to me smiling and she said that when she'd heard me start talking, she recognized the voice but couldn't see me. Then when I started talking about the 24 hour chip, she started to realize that I was talking about her. Her face began to blush red and she was afraid that people would realize that she was the woman I was talking about. She was ashamed because when she walked into the meeting, she'd been unable to raise her hand yet one more time because she was once again in her first 30 days of sobriety. She'd felt so ashamed and beaten down by the fact that she just couldn't stop drinking.... She felt like she didn't belong here.
When she shared that with me after the meeting, I hugged her and welcomed her back. I told her that for some months just preceeding my getting sober, I felt that I too was different from those who were, like my son, going into the rooms and getting better: I felt that I couldn't stop drinking and that until I did, I couldn't dare go in. Even when I did get sober and was in the rooms for some months, I continued to see others in the rooms as one of two types: people who couldn't stop drinking and people could...until one day.

One day I was looking around the room and it finally dawned on me that the one thing that I had in common with everyone in that room was NOT that we were all people who could stop drinking, but rather, that the one thing I held in common with everyone was that NONE OF US COULD STOP DRINKING! In fact, none of us CAN stop drinking. "Stopping" seems to imply power over alcohol and that seemed to be contrary to what I learned in the First Step. So, at least as far as I'm concerned, that inability to stop drinking is still true for me and always will be true. I can't stop drinking. Even today. But my saving grace has been that what I can do is stay sober, today. Just for today.

I told her that her walking into the room that night made my whole week, month, year! It simply didn't matter to me how many days or hours sober she had when she walked in. It meant everything to me that she walked in. I didn't care if she raised her hand. I was just glad that she came back. As she was walking away, she said that she was going home to try and find that 24 hour chip so that she could give it back to me---she said that she never realized how much it meant to me, being from my son and all. I yelled back, "Absolutely not! That chip is yours!"

And that chip is hers, until the wonderful day when she'll be able to give it away to someone who fighting the same battle that she fought....and lost. On that day, I hope she will be blessed to be able to give away a gift that never stops being given....

Mike L.