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| 7/8/2009 |
Peace at Last
by Peach47
My story is one of Al-Anon. I go back to my own youth and admit I drank
too much as a teenager. But, I never liked the taste much so I never
pursued drinking. I married in the mid-‘70s and my husband and I smoked
more than our share of pot. I liked it and felt I had control when I
was high. What I had no control over, however, was a cheating husband.
It ended when he brought his girlfriend into my home, my bed, while I
was still in the house! Needless to say, I left!
After we were divorced I continued to get high by myself and with friends. Then I met Paul who did not smoke pot, but drank more than anyone I ever knew. He could hold his liquor better than anyone and usually cleaned up at the pool tables late nights in bars. We became a couple and he moved in with me. Had I only known then what I know now!!!
I would have a glass of wine to his many glasses of Vodka. My preference was definitely the pot but with no one to smoke it with I rarely got high anymore. Paul drank everyday, sometimes at work. He brought home a paycheck so I never recognized the problem. After a few years I realized he was drinking from morning until night. The paychecks became very inconsistent. His friends stopped coming around. His family disowned him from sheer embarrassment. He lost jobs one after another and it was always their fault. I was preparing to leave him but then I became pregnant!
Now I have to tell you, I was pregnant twice with my first husband and miscarried both children at 8 weeks, so this child was a miracle!!! I decided to stay with him and make the best of it. My child deserved both parents, right? Maybe his drinking would slow down after the baby came. Maybe he would hold a job if he slowed down. Maybe he would change. I gave myself all the excuses I needed to stay.
Paul didn't drive. He had lost his license years before I met him (DUI) and never tried to get it back, so, when I went into labor, I drove myself to the hospital with him as my passenger. Then, at the hospital, all the while I was in labor, he kept disappearing into the bathroom. Later, as I gave birth to our daughter, he was nowhere to be found. He finally arrived an hour after she was born, so drunk he could hardly stand up.
Time passed and the disease progressed. There were days that Paul was “not so drunk” and would help me with the baby, but most days I’m not sure he even knew she was there. We never went anywhere anymore. We never saw anyone. I could tell you many horror stories that occurred through the years but most of you already have your own. He never actually hit me, but he would stalk me, put holes in the wall next to my head, destroy furniture and literally tear up the house. I lived in fear: fear that he would die, fear that he would not. I did the usual: I cried, I threatened, I searched, I poured his liquor down the drain.
When our daughter was nearly two, I had reached my limits. I told Paul I did not want to live like this anymore. I gave him $100 of my own money and told him to find a room and not come back.
The next day when I went to my car, I discovered him asleep in the back seat. All the money was gone and he could no longer afford a room. I refused to let him back
into the house. Eventually he got really angry and started to kick in the door.
I called an Employee Assistance Help Center and they could hear him in the background kicking the door. They told me to call the Police. This was the first time in my life I was faced with such a traumatic decision. If I called the cops he would get even angrier. If I didn’t, he would get inside and maybe hurt me. There was really no decision to be made. I called the cops. They came and took Paul away to detox.
After a few days, he was sent to a State run recovery program where he was an inpatient for 30 days. He called each day and I can remember how surprised I was to perceive him sober for the first time. After a couple weeks, I took my daughter and we visited him. He had been attending in-house AA meetings and swore he would never drink again. I decided to give the sober Paul another chance and let him come home when he was discharged. Maybe now we could become a normal family!
He was home only a few days when I found the empty bottle in the garbage. I begged him to stop!! After all we had been through to just try again!!! He promised he would stop. A couple of days went by and I could tell he was drunk. He found jobs, but they never lasted more than a week. He borrowed money from me to look for work. He would come home a few hours later falling down drunk. He stole from my purse, he stole from my personal belongings, he cashed in all my very old coins, family heirlooms, my jewelry, anything that would buy his alcohol.
When our daughter was nearly three, I told him we were leaving. Again, he promised to stop and he actually did try. But, he became horribly sick. The second day he had stopped I was lying in bed next to him. Suddenly his entire body jerked up in the air. I could see his eyes roll back into his head, arms and legs stiff and clenched, blood trickling out the corner of his mouth. I ran to the phone to call 911.
By the time the paramedics arrived he had come out of the seizure and was totally disoriented. They wanted to take him to the hospital but he refused. They said the blood coming out his mouth was him chewing his tongue off.
A few hours later, he was seizing again. I don’t know where the strength came from but I ran to the kitchen and got a wooden spoon. I straddled his chest and jammed the spoon between his teeth. He came out of this seizure quicker than the last. Yet still, he refused to go to the hospital. I woke up our baby and told him either he went to the ER or we were leaving. He let me drive him to ER where he had another seizure.
When he came out of this seizure, the doctors asked him how much he usually drank. He told them, “No more than anyone else.” Then they came out by me and asked the same question. I told the truth: one 2.2 liter bottle of Vodka a day. They rolled their eyes, like they already knew.
Paul went into DTs the next day. They had to strap him down to the bed. He saw the most dreadful, ghastly things for two more days. He struggled to break loose and cursed everyone who came near. I placed a small picture of Sara next to his bedside and one day I entered the room to find him talking to the picture. When he saw me enter the room he quickly turned back to the picture and said "Sara! Get down from there before your Mother sees you!!!" On the fourth day he went into respiratory failure.
He was placed in IC and remained there for three weeks. He was unconscious for two weeks and when he finally woke up the first thing he did was tear all the hoses from his distressed body. They moved him to a regular room and told me he was being discharged in two days. The hospital could do no more for him. When I brought him home he had to crawl up 3 flights of stairs. His legs were atrophied and he could barely move.
It took over three months before he was strong enough to leave the house alone. He remembered absolutely nothing of his hospital stay or the DTs. I remembered every horrifying moment of it all.
Eventually, he began to take nightly walks. He also made it a point to take the garbage out every night. One day our daughter, almost four, was trying to reach behind a cabinet in the kitchen. I went to help her. That’s when I discovered the bottle. Not that I didn’t already know, but now it faced me point blank!
I felt hopeless, disheartened and desperate. I stopped answering the phone or the door. I had totally isolated myself from people in order to keep up appearances. I became just like the old saying, “laughing on the outside and crying on the inside.”
I had heard of Al-Anon and looked them up in the phone book. I had a million excuses not to actually go to a meeting. I just wanted them to tell me over the phone how to make him stop drinking, how to make my life normal again. Finally, with no excuses left, I packed up Sara and went to my first meeting. I was not only welcomed with open arms by these strangers, but urged to come back the next week. Which I did! It took me awhile to understand that Al-Anon has absolutely nothing to do with the alcoholic. No great news-breaking suggestions to make him stop drinking. No haven for wallowing in self-pity. No port of suffering.
I always went home feeling strong and good about myself. What Al-Anon became for me, with much determination and hard work, was a sanctuary for self. I learned to let go and let God. I learned to change my attitude. I learned to accept the things I could not change and to change the things I could. Life actually regained some semblance of normality.
I can still recall an incident where Paul was bouncing off the walls, stumbling his way back into the living room. I was sitting reading to Sara and watching him from the corner of my eye. He made it halfway into the room and dropped to the floor with a loud thud! (Before Al-Anon I would have jumped up and rushed to him, frantically trying to help him get up.) But, now, I glanced up from the book I was reading for just a moment to see him hit the floor. I continued to read on with the story and let him lay there, passed out for the night. Sara reflected my changed attitude and we both relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the story before we went to bed for the night. Paul was still lying there the next morning.
At Christmas, I had invited my family over and had a lovely dinner prepared. Paul was pretty drunk a few hours before they were to arrive and passed out on the living room floor, dead as a doornail. Instead of trying to waken him in my usual frenzy, I entertained around him that year. I did not feel ashamed or embarrassed by any of it. After all, it had nothing to do with me. I was not the one passed out on the floor. It was one of the best Christmases I’d had since I met Paul. Everyone had a wonderful time and a great dinner without him.
The next morning he woke on the floor and realized Christmas was over. I said nothing to him about Christmas, not a hint of anger or disappointment. He decided himself that he was going to stop drinking forever. Apparently he had missed Christmas and no one even cared.
History showed that he needed medical help to get sober, yet he refused to reach out for it. He chose not to get help, and I chose not to watch this time. So, I packed Sara up and we drove to my girlfriend’s house in a far away suburb two days after Christmas. I felt deep down inside that Paul was not going to make it this time.
I drove a very long way each day to take Sara to pre-school and myself to work. I called Paul from work each day to see how he was doing. He said he was fine and that we should come home. I had no intentions of returning home. I had made up my mind that I would no longer live that life.
Everything in that house had belonged to me. The lease was in my name and I paid the rent. Paul had contributed absolutely nothing in the 8 years we spent together. In reality he had destroyed most of the furniture and household things I had owned. All I wanted was Sara's things. The rest he could have. Whatever he decided to do for himself he should pursue. I felt very strongly about my own future and knew for certain that he would not play a part in it.
New Years Day I tried calling Paul but got no answer. I pulled out my list of Al-Anon friends and began dialing their numbers, one after another. I came to the end of my list and started at the top again. I received a lot of common sense advice and wonderful support.
It was a Holiday and to drive all the way into the city, dragging my little girl along to walk into who knows what? Better to wait until the next morning, I decided, when I had to go to work anyway. I could drop Sara off securely at her preschool first and then go check on Paul. It was only a few blocks away.
I can remember to this day the gut wrenching, dreadful feeling I had in the pit of my stomach as I put my key in the door and opened it as far as the security bolt would allow. I knew in that instant that he was dead.
I asked my neighbor to call the police. They came and had to break down the front door. They searched the house but could not find Paul. It was dead of winter and all the windows were wide open. I sat in the middle of the house in Sara’s bedroom listening to the police going from room to room stating, “He’s not in here!”
Finally, I heard one of them say, “He’s in here.”
I asked, "Is he dead?"
The officer answered, "Yes."
I did not want to see him, did not want to look at the bloody horror I anticipated. I asked the officer if he looked real bad. He said no, he looked fine. So I forced myself to look at Paul for the last time in the home we shared together. It took every ounce of strength in me to go look. I expected to see something gruesome, but instead I saw peace. He sat against the door in the bathroom, chin touching his chest. He was very pale and very bruised from the seizures. His fingertips were beginning to turn blue. But his face had such a peaceful look on it. One that I had never seen in life.
I realized at once that God had taken Paul to a much more peaceful place -- a place where he would no longer struggle with himself, a place where he could be happy with himself, a place where he would never have to feel shame, guilt, remorse or anger ever again. I felt that same peace within myself, too.
I believe that God sent me to Al-Anon that fateful day when all hope was lost. He sent me to gather all the Strength that was necessary to leave Paul, all the Courage that was necessary to endure his death, and all the Serenity required to survive guilt-free and with hope.
That night I went to my Al-Anon meeting. When they passed the basket at the end of the meeting, my sponsor came to me with the proceeds. My remarkable Fellowship wanted me to have the donations from that night’s meeting to cover necessities for the funeral.
I pray every day that I am able to accept God’s will in any fashion He sees fit. I work my program diligently with every conflicting aspect that enters my life. My daughter, has inherited her father’s disease. All I can say is: thy will, not mine, be done.
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