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.

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.