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.

Death and Life...In That Order

I've been very busy in my life recently, but in recent weeks, I've had three experiences with people dying: and all three were alcoholics:

1. The first was a old man, 41 years sober, who took his own life about 5 weeks ago.

2. The second was a young man, somewhere in his first 30 days (again), who took his own life yesterday.

3. The third was a brother of a new friend of who just recently celebrated 25 years sober. This friend just went back to his family home on the East coast to be with his brother who was in the last stages of dying a painful death as a result of his late stage and untreated (as far as I know)alcoholism.

Lots of death. All sorts of feelings and thoughts associated with each of these deaths. Essentially, all of them boil down to a deep sadness.

The first guy appeared to me to be a very very unhappy and lonely man, despite a long string of years of sobriety and active membership in AA. This came out in frequent fits of anger. Didn't seem to have a close friend. Fairly long string of failed relationships with women. I don't know his story and don't in any way mean to be judging him good or bad. Just what I saw over the last 7 years or so.

The second guy is the one whose death brought up the most sadness in me: he'd been struggling for quite a few years to get sober and had many issues in addition to his problem with alcohol/drugs. But he was trying with all his might to get and stay sober. I didn't know him well at all, just a few interactions within the meeting rooms in Sacramento where I work, but I didn't really know him well at all. Last time I saw him was at last Wednesday's noon meeting, the same meeting where his sponsor announced earlier today that one of our members had taken his own life yesterday. I quickly remembered back to last Wednesday and how depressed this guy had seemed that day: he was clearly anxious, had to get up and leave the meeting several times to go wash off his face or just walk off some of the anxiety that he was feeling: and then he'd return to his seat. He didn't talk that day. I remember noticing him and his heightened state of anxiety. But I got distracted by someone else's share that day and I made the decision to stay after and talk to that guy rather than Mike. Never saw him again and didn't think anything of it until today.

The third guy is someone I know only through this new friend who recently shared with me a brief history of what was going on with his brother back East who was dying of his alcoholism. He shared that with me a little over a week ago, just as he was heading off to go be with his brother and his family. I learned from a mutual friend today that Chris' brother had died this week and that Chris had been there for the death and was now having to deal not only with his brother's death but also with a rather crazy family going through the process of dealing with a son/brother's death. Hard enough to deal with death when every one's sane: can't imagine the pain of having to go through that with the pain getting mixed in with all sorts of religious craziness and platitudes (e.g., it was God's will, he's in a better place, etc.). Few, if any, actually dealing honestly and openly with the deep sadness and loss.

That's sort of what I'm beginning to go through I suppose. Feelings of sadness. Loss. In the case of Mike, the second guy I have talked about, I've been mostly going through a process where I look back at my words, my actions, my silence and my non-action: what did I say to help him, what did I do to help him, what did I keep to myself, what did I fail to do? I talked a little bit about this at the noon meeting today and there was one guy who seemed to be subtly counselling me (you know, through the subtle cross-talk that we oftentimes do in meetings, where we comment on what someone else has said without really talking directly to them...but we are) not to go through this second guessing process: According to him, I'm not responsible for this guy's decision to kill himself (which of course is true), nor am I responsible for his drinking or his sobriety (also true) and that there was nothing I could have done or said that would have made a difference in the end result. And it's that last message that I just can't accept without going through a careful self-assessment.

My sponsor once told me a story about a guy, years ago, who came into the rooms of AA trying to get sober, but over a 10 to 15 year period he was never able to get much time. He kept going out. But he kept coming back eventually and both Dave and his sponsor, Earle, kept trying to do anything they could to try and help this guy get sober. Eventually, the guy ended up committing suicide. Dave and Earle drove to Berkeley to attend the funeral/memorial and while they were there, the guy's wife came over to them and said, "You must be Dave and you must be Earle. I just wanted to come over and tell you that my husband talked most fondly of both of you and how much you both did to try and help him deal with his alcoholism. You guys never gave up on him and that meant a lot to him and to me." When they were driving home from the funeral, Dave looked over at Earle and noticed him deep in thought and shaking his head slowly back and forth. Earle then said, somewhat to himself, "I was always trying to find the right words to help him... And I never was able to find them."

While I'm not done going through this process of grieving for these three guys, ultimately, I know that I'll end up in the same place: "I was always trying to find the right words to help them. And I was not able to find them before their death."

"I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that: I am responsible."

I've never really felt comfortable with the Responsibility Declaration (sometimes referred to as the AA Grapevine's Statement of Purpose), but now I think I am comfortable with it. It doesn't start off by saying, "I am guilty..." No, it says that I am responsible. For what I say, what I don't say, what I do and what I don't do....in terms of helping others. I can own all of this. I can grow from my mistakes and failures. I can choose life.

I can choose life. Strange that I come to realize that truth more fully only after having had experienced three separate and powerful encounters with dying and death.

I read somewhere, wish I could remember where, that someone said that most of us go through our entire lives fearing death....when in fact what we should really be fearing is dying without ever having lived. Living life fully seems more important to me now. How often I get distracted by the details of life such that I start "surviving" and forget "living".

Feel better now. Want to see if I can get up to Sacramento on Saturday to attend Mike's funeral. See if I can be of any comfort to his family or to others.

Take care!

Mike L.