Our Part

Last night I got to get away to a meeting, my first once since beginning my vacation almost a week ago. It was a small group in a small Oregon coast town. They each seemed to know each other as the back of their own hands and welcomed me as a visitor without any hesitation. Very informal format which came from the fact that they all knew each other so well. When no one stepped up with a topic, they grabbed one of the daily meditation/reading books and made that the topic: I heard the reading to talk about relationships and the sickening role resentments can play in relationships if we let them. Others heard anything from the 4th, 5th and 6th steps, or an opportunity to share their story of recovery with a fresh face (me) in the meeting.

I shared with them my own most recent experience with deep hurt morphing into resentment and how AA had taught me the importance of focusing on "our part" if we are to find any sense of peace and serenity in our recovery. This experience came during my youngest daughter's wedding reception about a month ago now.

Rachel had asked me about a week before the wedding to give a talk at the reception. This meant a lot to me and for the entire week between then and the wedding, I spent numerous hours crafting the perfect talk for my daughter and her soon to be husband. I never wrote a thing down on paper. I just started drafting my talk out loud in the car as I drove to a from work that week. The centerpiece of the talk was a quote that I had memorized years ago (even before I was sober) from a book called "The Magical Child" by Jonathan Chilton Pierce. I began reading that book shortly after our first child was born and something at the beginning of the second chapter gave me a great sense of peace and comfort at the overwhelming panic I began to experience at the thought of what this newborn child was going to need from me and how little prepared I felt to provide what she so needed from me. The quote was:

Matrix is Latin for the word womb. From that word, we get the words matter, material, mater, mother and so on. These all refer to the basic stuff, the physical substance from which all life derives.

The womb offers three gifts to the newly forming life: a sense of possibility, a sense of energy with which to explore those possibilities and a safe place from which those explorations can take place.

Whenever these three needs are met, we have a matrix. And the growth of intelligence takes place by utilizing the energy given to explore the possibilities given while standing in the safe place given by the matrix.

By the time the day of the wedding arrived, my talk was ready for primetime. It was perfect. I had every word right, the tones and inflections just right. At the end of each practice recitation, I cried. And I knew that my words would strike my daughter the same way. I was ready.

Just before it came time for me to give my talk, my son (who was Rachel's Maid of Honor) and my oldest daughter Katie (who served as Rachel's Matron of Honor) gave their talk to their sister and her new husband. It was wonderful. My son came "this" close to being inappropriate about three or four times, but always stayed this side of the line he's spent years crossing. During their talk, my wife leaned over to me and asked me to walk down to them and take the microphone from them and ask them to "hurry it up". I looked at her aghast and she said, "No, if you do it, it will be funny! If I do it, it will look controlling." I responded that "It wouldn't be funny even if I did it--because it WAS controlling!" Shortly after that, their talk came to a funny and heartfelt end and the microphone was turned over to me to say a few short words to Rachel and Daniel.

I walked down and took the microphone and began my talk. I shared that when I was their age, I discovered what was most important to me to accomplish in life and that was to become a father, a parent. That shortly thereafter, I met Nancy and fell in love. We were married and began having children. And I got scared. Then someone gave me a book called The Magical Child by Jonathan Chilton Pierce.

At that point, I realized that someone, my wife, was now standing beside me. Nancy reached out and took the mic and said, "Mike, can you hurry it up? We only have this place until 10 o'clock!" Everyone laughed, I suppose all of them know I don't have a short story in me. I didn't laugh though because it threw me off balance as I was trying to recite the perfect talk to my daughter and I realized there was no way to finish this talk as I had planned it in my head ahead of time. As Nancy walked away, I knew that my perfect talk had been destroyed but that I couldn't do anything but try to move forward without making a complete disaster out of it. So, I went on to quote most of Pierce's magical words, left off the last sentence and also some other parts of the remaining part of my perfect talk. No one but me knew that their was anything left out. All of them, including Rachel, thought it was a beautiful talk -- very much from my heart, very much Mike. Everyone but me.

Me? I was deeply hurt. I was angry that Nancy had attempted to control the situation -- for whatever reason that might have been for her. I blamed her for ruining my perfect talk, my perfect moment, my perfect gift to my daughter. Ruining something that simply could not be recreated or repaired. That moment was over and done with. There was no way to rewind or
"do over". But I knew that I could not share my hurt with my wife -- it would destroy her. She had put so much into creating the perfect wedding for our daughter: collecting 200 dinner plates from garage sales and antique shops over the last year that would make this a unique event for our guests, finding the perfect venue for this wedding, the perfect flowers, the table gifts for our guests (small Heinz catsup bottles with Rachel and Daniel's names and wedding date--Rachel is a catsup addict), etc. If she knew that her funny interruption of my talk, meant only to keep things "light" when I had a tendency to be serious and philosophical and longwinded, had actually hurt my feelings at such a deep level, it would kill her and destroy her memory of this wonderful wedding day.

So I kept my hurt inside and tried to rationalize it away. I thought of ways that I could get around this unfortunate situation without talking it out with my wife: i.e., I could formalize my talk "in full" onto a plaque and give it to them on their 30 day anniversary, I could "let it go" and move on, etc. But the hurt remained and within two days it had morphed into a full blown resentment. Resentment is a decision to hold on to a feeling beyond its normal lifetime. And that's what I did: I held on and more, I nursed it and fed it. And it grew. By Monday, all it took was some little annoying comment made by my wife before I snapped at her with far more feeling than her comment deserved. And she snapped back with deeply held hurts/resentments of her own. Because we were in the company of other family members, we covered over our anger "until later".

When "later" arrived that evening after all family and friends had left to return home, Nancy look over at me and asked, "Well, are you going to apologize for what happened today?" I looked at her and kept all my vicious responses inside my head where they belonged and said nothing. Silence is my favorite weapon in battles like this--although at the time, I really don't realize I'm using this as a weapon -- I am just trying not to hurt someone I love and the only way I know how to do this when I'm feeling such strong and powerful emotions is to be silent. Of course, that silence is the one thing that hurts Nancy the most.

So, she then asked, "Is this apology going to be something that comes in a day or so, or after a week?" I keep my silence as long as I could and ended it by saying the kindest thing I could, "I'm leaning more toward a week...." Amazingly, she didn't reply with anything other than her own silence.

The next day, I got up early and went to an early meeting before heading to work. It was a step meeting and they were reading Step 4 from the 12x12. For some reason, this morning, the whole chapter spoke directly to me and what I had been going through in the last four days and unfortunately, it was all about looking for my part in this whole ordeal. I didn't want to hear anything but "her part" but I realized that focusing on her part was what I had been doing for all of the last four days and all that had gotten me was more and more suffering and more and more pain. As I surrendered to the idea that I could get relief from this suffering and pain only by taking a serious and careful look at "my part" did things start to change for me. I briefly shared my discovery of my part with the group: my part was all the expectations I had placed in coming up with the perfect talk, giving that perfect talk at this one point in time and history "no matter what", my thinking I had some control over the outcome of all my preparations and planning and efforts, and, most of all, my decision after my wife's interruption not to go ahead by reciting exactly what I had planned without any edits or rushing things! True, she interrupted my perfect talk, but I'm the one who changed the talk from that point forward. Not her. Me. God, I hate it when I'm wrong!

I drove to work as usual, but I spent the time again reviewing my part in all of this and seeing that I needed to make an amends to her rather than holding on to the falsehood that she owed me a huge amends... That night, as I was leaving work (trying to avoid the inevitable I suppose...) I texted her and told her that "I was going to be home around 7, with humble pie and an apology." She replied quickly that "Blackberry would be sufficient...". I knew it was going to be alright then. That night, I started off my apology by telling her that I needed her to understand that what I was going to tell her that night had NOTHING to do with her or anything that she had done. I had discovered earlier that day what had been bothering me for the last five days was something that I had done, even though I had been mistakenly thinking it was something she had done to hurt me the day of Rachel's wedding. I told her that earlier that day, it dawned on me that it wasn't anything she had done that had really hurt me, but rather, what I had done myself that was the true cause of my hurt. That said, I told her the story of what I saw happening the night of my "perfect talk" and how hurt I was by what happened that night after her interruption.

As expected, my sharing this information with her hurt her deeply and profoundly. She stood up crying, saying that I had ruined the memory of this wedding for her... All feelings that she had a perfect right to have and to feel and to share with me, but none of which really had anything to do with me (thank God I'd learned something in these years of recovery!). After a few minutes of some painful sharing, all things between us came back together and we were reconnected again in no more than 10 minutes. My irrational fear of her feelings and reactions has always been a self-constructed roadblock to me being myself and expressing my feelings to this woman who I love and adore more than anyone on the planet. You'd think after more than 30 years of marriage I would get over this.... But then, if you were thinking that, I suspect that you don't have 30 years of marriage!

By the time the next night came around, she was able to share with me that earlier at work, one of the nuns at her school walked up to her and said that her favorite part of the whole wedding was when Nancy interrupted Mike's talk (this nun was my former Department Chair when I taught religion at this same school where my wife is now principal...) --- sure, Mike's talk was great and touching and "pure Mike!" it was Nancy's lighthearted interruption that brought a lightness to the whole event that made this one of the perfect Mike/Nancy gatherings. And we laughed. And then I began rubbing her feet --- a self-imposed penance that I've lived now for nine and a half years of recovery and expect to be doing for the remainder of that recovery and for the remainder of this life/marriage.

The freedom gained by focusing on my part has been great to be sure.

Take care!

Mike L.

Attitude of Gratitude

I've got several of my sponsees working on a common assignment (I'm not an assignment kind of sponsor --- but for some reason, each of them seemed to be asking for an assignment and I came up with this....) and I realized today that today, more than ever, I needed to practice my own counsel. These guys have been making daily gratitude lists which are a little different than what most people do with these lists. Because of some things I learned from Earle early on in my recovery, I've adapted the typical daily list of things you feel grateful for by adding a little addendum of resentments. Another unusual thing about this assignment is that I setup a private blog space for each of them to write these gratitude lists: each blog site is tightly secured so that only the two of us have access to their blog and only the two of us can post things to those blog sites. [Quick aside: This use of a blog site is a great tool for increasing my ability to communicate with my sponsees and for them to communicate with me.... When they post a message to their blog, I get notified by email and the same happens when I post something to their site. It's been great...]

What I've asked these guys to do is make a daily list of at least 10 things that they feel grateful for in their lives. They can list more than 10 if they like, but they need to try to come up with at least 10. In addition, I ask them to list 3 to 5 things that they simply do not feel grateful for --- in fact, they may be things they adamantly regret or resent. The only restriction on these items is that they can only be very brief statements (no more than a line or so) and they must all end with a period. What I'm wanting is for them to document their resentments or regrets by writing them down very briefly. I know these resentments are there, so we might as well write them down. Just a short phrase which will remind them later on about what they wish didn't or wasn't happening in their lives. Write one down quickly and put a period after it. Write a second one down quickly and put a period after it. At least 3 of these and no more than 5.

No one ever told me to do a gratitude list this way. I just made it up because it seemed to embody the truth/wisdom that Earle passed on to me: that is, every thing's perfect just the way it is, we don't need to change anything. Also, there's no such thing as a "bad" feeling or "bad" circumstance: whatever's happened is just the way it's supposed to be. And the kicker: were it not for all the so-called "bad" things, I wouldn't be where I am right now. Were it not for all the so-called "bad" things in the past, I wouldn't have most all of the things that I actually feel grateful for today.

For Earle, gratitude was not a feeling: it was an attitude. A habit which many many people in recovery over the last 70+ years have found very helpful in their staying sober and finding some semblance of peace, serenity, happiness and joy.

1. I'm grateful for my sobriety today.
2. I'm grateful for my wife of 28+ years, especially for the last 7 years where things have seemed to blossom between us (sure it's a pure coincidence that I'm 7+ years sober now...).
3. I'm grateful for each of my children.
4. I'm grateful for my daughter asking me to go with her to see Robin Williams do a comedy show in Mill Valley Weds night: it was a continuation of my living amends with her.
5. I'm grateful for Matt trusting me enough to tell me the truth about his day count and to resume our journey of recovery together.
6. I'm grateful for a stranger coming up to me after the meeting tonight and asking me if I would sponsor him: we'd met about a year ago, but he went out and is just now coming back into the program after a DUI last weekend (he's scared and desperate). I'm honored beyond words.
7. I'm grateful for my job and the wonderful and skilled team of folks that work for me and give me the freedom and flexibility in my schedule to squeeze in what I really love to do into my busy work days.
8. I'm grateful for all three of my sponsors, especially the dead one.
9. I'm grateful for this weird organization called AA: it's probably the only organization I could belong to without a resentment or anxiety or fear of judgment or condemnation.
10. I'm grateful for this blog and all of the amazing folks I'm come to know and love as a result of this endeavor to expand my program into a new arena.

Now, the things I'm not so damn grateful for today:

1. That Mike H. took his life a few weeks ago: I had tears come to my eyes this morning at his funeral when I saw his mother standing near his ashes.
2. That the last time I saw Mike H. I didn't sense the deep level of anxiety within him, nor did I go up to him after that Weds meeting and give him a hug.
3. That Earle's not here with me now so that I can talk through these feelings of sadness and regret with him.

The attitude of gratitude is not for the faint of heart or the half measures sort of folks. It's for those who commit themselves to the no bullshit program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It takes work each day. There are no days off. There's no "fake it til you make it" escape measures. It's life head on and face to face. It's writing stuff down so that you can go back to it later on and start putting the pieces together.

I am confident that I will be able to go back to this list sometime in the not too distant future and discovery that they three regrets will have led to some new deepening of my own compassion for others and myself, some new heightened sensitivity for the pain and suffering within someone who crosses my path, whether that be within the context of a meeting or elsewhere.

I know that because there were regrets in my not too distant past which are now appearing on my list of things that I do feel grateful for today: (1) I used to regret that I was an alcoholic (none of the ten items above would be on that list were I not an alcoholic then and today); (2) I used to regret that I was married and that I had children --- they were expecting too much from me and I was feeling more and more the total and absolute failure as husband and father (now, I can't imagine life without my wife or my grown and wonderful children). I could go on forever.

But my day's at an end and I'm wiped out. This was a long, full day. But I couldn't end it without going through this gratitude list process.

Take care!

Mike L.

Sobriety is More than Not Drinking

I was reminded today of one of my most favorite resentments in recovery which has to do with an oft quoted page of the Big Book, 3rd Edition: Page 449. When I first got sober, the 3rd edition of the Big Book was on it's way out and the 4th edition was on the way in. For some reason, I suppose because I'm basically cheap, when I got sober I bought a used 3rd edition Big Book at Half Priced Books and it was this book that I began reading in earnest as soon as I got sober.

At a meeting at St. Bonaventure's Church in Concord, CA one night, the topic was Page 449 and Acceptance. They read a bit from that page, "And acceptance has been the answer to all my problems today...." and I heard a woman at the meeting say that she absolutely loved that page, so much so that she memorized it. Well, although I was only a few months sober, I'd already developed my weird habit of memorizing bits and pieces of AA literature, stuff that I found particularly wise or helpful or poignant. Well, when I heard all the talk about P. 449 and then this woman saying that she memorized it, I decided that it was going to be next on my list of things to memorize.

The first thing I noticed about this page was that page 449 did not start at the beginning of someone's story, in fact, the stuff they were talking about on page 449 didn't even start at the beginning of the page. What was odd about the quote being quoted was that it started with "And" which seemed to me like it was part of something bigger and that I needed to see what came before the "And". I also thought it odd that in this first sentence, it was talking about "all my problems today" as though the author had talked about some particular problem before this and that I might want to consider reading backwards to find out what that was....

Eventually, I looked backwards to the previous paragraph which began on the bottom of page 448: "At last, acceptance proved to be the key to my drinking problem..." Well, that was certainly the "particular problem" that preceeded the "all my problems" on page 449! And that problem, alcoholism, seemed to me to be of far more interest and importance than "all my [other] problems"! So I memorized that paragraph too.

After awhile though, in the process of memorizing this paragraph, I began to wonder why this paragraph started off with "At last!" -- that seemed to indicate that the author had been struggling with this problem of alcohol and that other solutions just didn't seem to work for him. And then, eventually, or "At last!" he discovered a solution that did work: Acceptance.

So then, I decided to read backwards one more time and there in the preceeding paragraph was the seed of my longest held and most cherished resentment. There was the line that made more sense to me as a new recovering alcoholic than all the other words in the book up to that point in my recovery. But before I get to what that line was, I need to get back to this bringing me to my favorite resentment. The resentment?

Well, until that time, I'd heard many many great lines and sayings within the meeting rooms of AA, but that line led me to my first original thought/line since getting sober. That line was "The best line on page 449 is to be found on page 448! "It helped me a great deal to become convinced that alcoholism was a disease, not a moral issue, that my drinking was the result of a compulsion even though I hadn't been aware of the compulsion at the time and that sobriety had nothing to do with willpower." That "line" about 448 was my line!! But by the time it came time to "wow!" the crowds of AA meetings with my line, no one was talking about p.449 any more. Because in the 4th edition of the Big Book some A-hole in the AA editorial office decided to move this story by Dr. Paul O. to another location in the Big Book and what used to be on p.449 was now on p.417. And now that that was a fact of life, my line was totally worthless and without any punch! I mean, it just doesn't sound as powerful to say that the best line of p.417 is on p.416! Who cares??

Well, I made one more last ditch effort today to revive the resentment and share this story with the group today. It got lots of laughs. Which brings me (finally!) to the point of today's post: the importance of happiness and joy in the process of recovery. Not drinking is truly a critical and essential part of the recovery process, but if one just stops at "not drinking" as their one step of recovery: I think they're missing the full benefit of this new way of life. Even if they do continue "not drinking" for many years, even until death, I think they've cheated themselves out of the full benefit of the program of AA. What does that have to do with p.449 and Dr. Paul?

Well, I remember listening to a tape of a talk given my Dr. Paul (he died sometime in the 1990's I believe) at a Yosemite AA/Alanon Conference and somewhere toward the end of this talk (which if you've never heard Dr. Paul talk, you've got to do this: he was hilarious and you don't really capture the full level of humor intertwined in his story if you don't listen to him talk...) he mentioned that his all time favorite line in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous was to be found on the middle of page 132, in fact it was right smack dab in the middle of page 132, "sixteen lines down from the top, sixteen lines up from the bottom, two extraneous words to the left and two extraneous words to the right. And the line is, "We absolutely insist on enjoying life!"

That's a great line--even if it is someone else's!--and it got across to me what I'm trying to get across here: sobriety is more than not drinking, it's about finding a new way of living which can, sometimes quickly, sometimes (more often!) slowly bring about a change of perception which results in an inner sense of contentment, joy and peace with one's self and one's life. Just as it is, today.

Somepeople find me odd because I memorize stuff. And they're right. But Dr. Paul was odder than me. Sure, I memorized his telling the story of his favorite line, but he's the one who was so sick that he discovered that the line was 16 lines down from the top and 16 lines up bottom and that there were two extraneous words on both sides of his favorite line. Thank god there are some sicker than me.

Mike L.

Gratitude and Resentment: Not Feelings

I sometimes notice that in meetings there are times that certain topics for discussion begin floating from one meeting to another. Sort of cross-pollination. In the last couple of weeks, the topic that's floating around here, both in the Contra Costa county area where I live, but also in Sacramento where I work, is the topic of Gratitude.

When I first got sober in October 2001, I remember that during the month of November the topic was often Gratitude. While I was glad to have had the obsession and the actual act of drinking leave me the month earlier (two days before my first AA meeting...), I wouldn't characterize myself as grateful. In fact, those that described themselves as "grateful alcoholics" sort of bothered me. What was there to be grateful about? Sure, I was sober----but I wasn't able to drink and for some strange reason I missed that. I missed what was clearly a miserable way of life. Strange.

By the time my second sober November came around, the topic of Gratitude started being bantered about and I think I started harboring something of a resentment for this unofficial AA tradition of focusing on the Thanksgiving-like theme of Gratitude during the month of November. That's when I learned an important truth about both Gratitude and Resentment. Neither were feelings.

When I was newly sober, my feelings were all over the map and I was, to say the least, quite uncomfortable with them. All of them. Good (sense of peace, calm, joy, happiness, love, affection, etc.) and Bad (anger, fear, jealousy, hatred, anger, depression, anger, etc.). None of them were the way they "should" be: if they were "good" they weren't good enough or they didn't last long enough. If they were "bad" they were too bad and lasted waaaaay too long.

Within a short time, I met Dr. Earle who'd gotten sober two days before I was born. He'd gotten sober on June 15, 1953 and I was born June 17, 1953. When I met him, I was 48 years old and two months sober; he was 48 years and five months sober. One of the first things I learned from Earle was that there was nothing good or bad about feelings: they just were. Actually, I don't think I learned this from Earle. He certainly tried to teach me this truth of his, but I wasn't buying any of it. Learning took some time.

Earle would some times come into a meeting and gently put his gnarly old hand on my shoulder and ask, "How are you doing, Mike?" I'd respond as I thought one should in public, "Fine." He'd then look at me with a knowing smile and say, "You wouldn't lie to an old man like me, would you?" and then he'd sit down next to me and we'd chat before the meeting. I can't tell you how much I miss those chats. Especially today as tomorrow will be the 5th anniversary of his death.

When I eventually became comfortable enough sharing some of the truth about my feelings with this old man, we would sometimes get into a back and forth routine along the lines of the following: What are you feeling? A little depressed I suppose. What's wrong with that? Well, I don't like feeling depressed. What's wrong with that? It's depressing! What's wrong with that? I start to feel sad. What's wrong with that? It hurts. What's wrong with that? I start to get angry. What's wrong with that? I don't like being angry. What's wrong with that? It's uncomfortable! What's wrong with that?

Now, that would go on and on until I'd get so frustrated that this absolutely stupid old man who, in addition to being 48 years sober was also a licensed psychiatrist and surgeon, seemed to be fixated on asking me the same question again and again and again. What's wrong with that feeling? Ultimately, I'd lose all patience and respect for this man and let loose with what I hoped to be the "Final Answer" with him and I told him that "what was wrong" with all these feelings was that if I kept having them, I was surely going to start feeling like drinking again! God dammit! I thought that would finally shut him up, but, you guessed it: his only response was to ask with that irritating smile, "Well, Mike, what's wrong with that?"

By that time, I'd learned enough to know that it was useless to follow up with the only remaining retort which was, if I kept feeling like this any longer, I might not only "feel" like drinking, I might actually drink! I never asked him that question. For years, I've thought that his response might have been, "what's wrong with that?" but recently, I've decided that he would have said that all of these feelings, including the fear of drinking again, were all just feelings. Not good or bad. Just feelings. For years I'd attempted to manage feelings by means of alcohol and other techniques and aides. None of them really worked because they were all premised on the idea that particular feelings were unacceptable. I don't think that Earle would have flippantly said that the actual "act of drinking" again would be good, he was talking about feelings within me. Come to think of it, he pretty much only talked about feelings and emotions. Even when he was talking about seemingly "spiritual" things, he was really talking about emotions. I think for him, emotions and spirituality were synonymous.

Anyway, it was about this time that I started to try to reconcile Earle's teaching on feelings with some things I was hearing in AA, including the importance of Gratitude in the recovery process and the ultimate dangers of Resentment. When I listened to recovering alcoholics talk about either of these topics, I thought most people were talking about "feelings" (grateful and resentful) and if so, I began to wonder "Why were they talking about Gratitude as something 'good' and Resentment as something 'bad'?" Given that Earle was something of an AA icon (his story was in the Big Book and he had known Bill Wilson), I thought I'd finally found his Achilles Heal: were all these folks wrong to talk goodly about Gratitude and badly about Resentment?

When I challenged Earle about this apparent widespread heresy, he laughed and explained to me that neither Gratitude or Resentment were feelings. They were both attitudes. Or better, decisions. Gratitude was a attitude or habit one could develop over time to appreciate all that one had received in life, so-called good and so-called bad. He said that for some time, recovering alcoholics had discovered the value of developing such a habit or attitude of gratitude. It seemed to help many people stay sober and, more importantly, develop a joyful and contented way of life...without need for chemical enhancement.

Resentment too was not a feeling: it was a decision. Resentment means to "re-feel" and while resentment is often mis-talked about as though it were a feeling in itself, it wasn't. Earle believed that resentment wasn't a feeling, it was a decision (sometimes a well-entrenched habit) to hold on to a particular feeling well beyond it's natural life span. Resentment isn't "anger", it's a decision to hold onto anger (or any other negative feeling) well beyond it's normal shelf life.

After six years of sobriety, I'm no longer resentful about the topic of Gratitude. I actually appreciate it and enjoy the opportunity it gives me to share this story with others. January's become a time for me to reflect of the gifts of my sobriety, and one of the most important gifts given me in my life was the fourteen months I had spending some time with Dr. Earle Marsh. The night he died, I was holding his hand. He wasn't alone. He'd waited for me.

And that's another story.

Mike L.