- Alcohol
- Faith
I remember…
I remember Mom making a pitcher of martinis for her and my dad when I was three. Cigarette in her lips, she didn’t measure. She poured straight from the bottles. I don’t know how large the pitcher was or how long it took for them to drink it, but I know it must have happened pretty often because I remember it clearly.
I remember Dad coming home some days and saying he didn’t want any martinis because he had a “three martini lunch” with the guys. By this time Mom didn’t care. She would finish the pitcher herself if she had made one.
I remember Dad starting to become concerned about Mom’s drinking. He would mark the level on the bottle. He would dole out an “appropriate” amount in another bottle. He would tell her the car wouldn’t start so if she wanted booze, she would have to walk to the store. (At that time we lived a good four-mile hike from the nearest liquor store.) Dad tried to talk to Mom about drinking less. She would sit and nod her head, cigarette in her lips. Mom didn’t like to be told what to do when it came to something that “didn’t bother anyone else.”
I remember the day Mom was let go from her job, not necessarily for drinking. They were “downsizing.” Dad had me hide the shotgun he had in the house. He was afraid she would come home and shoot herself and/or us. Mom took to drinking even more. Unfortunately I had also started drinking by then. I should have known from watching Mom that I had an addictive personality. I ramped-up pretty fast. I could drink a fifth of liquor in a couple weeks, then a week, and then a couple days. I was mad at myself and mad at Mom because I realized I was doing exactly what she had been doing for so many years. I made myself stop. I “only” drank after work and on weekends, but I drank heavily then.
I remember Dad telling me he had cancer. I remember Mom having to drive him to chemo treatments and being afraid she would crash because she’d been drinking before taking him there. I was busy working and being married so I rarely went to the chemo treatments. When Dad was in the hospital for the last time, he asked me to watch over Mom and try to get her to stop drinking. I told him I’d try. Dad died in June 1999. My husband and I were afraid Mom would quickly follow Dad by drinking herself to death. She didn’t.
I remember Mom saying she wanted to sell her house and buy a new one. It was 2003. I had just started a new job, we had just started the process of adoption and I had stopped my drinking. I helped mom sell her home and buy a new one. The one she chose was very nice, a new build very close to a liquor store.
I remember coming home with our two new children and saying, “My mom will never babysit them until she stops drinking.” She never got to babysit. In May 2007 she went into the hospital. She passed away at the end of July 2007.
I remember saying, “I hope Mom just dies because going to the hospital every day with the kids is a pain.” My children were toddlers, one in a special preschool for early interventions, the other still at home with me. I remember telling my mom gas prices had gone over $4 per gallon, and it was very expensive to keep driving to see her. She countered with, “So you think it’s easy to sit here every day?”
I remember my three-year-old son sobbing on the way home from burying my mom. It was pouring rain that day. He sobbed the whole way home saying, “They put dirt on Grandma! They put her in the ground!” I remember I was still mad at Mom. Mad that she never got to babysit my kids. Mad that she decided alcohol was a bigger and better part of her life than her family. I was mad that I had the same addictive personality. I was very mad that I bought a bottle of vodka the week after Mom was buried, tried a sip of it and hated it. I threw it away as soon as I tasted it. I wanted to be numb from everything, but being numb through alcohol wouldn’t work because I had to be there for my children. Before that bottle and that sip, I had been clean and sober for eight years.
It has been more than seven years, and I still occasionally feel very angry at my mother. I remember things she told me: “You are the biggest disappointment in my life.” That one stung. It still hangs around. Why was I such a disappointment that day? I wouldn’t stop at a liquor store so she could buy a 1.5 liter bottle of vodka. It’s probably been 15 years since she said that, but it replays on some days.
Recovery from addiction, whether by the addict or a person who loves/loved the addict, takes a very long time. The bad memories mix with the good. My mom was a good mom. She never beat me, she had a good sense of humor, she was pretty and she was very artistic and popular. I would have loved to have her live much longer. The alcohol addiction just overtook her life. It was sad to see how much it hurt her and changed her. Recovery would have been very hard for her.
I am sober now and live with my dear husband of 22 years, my two kids of nearly 10 years, two cats and a dog. I’ve been sober for seven years since that slip of a sip in 2007. My main reason for staying sober is because life is so much better. Yes it can be hard and painful, but no one promised us a pain-free life. Another reason for staying sober is because I am now constantly dizzy. I had inner ear/brain surgery in 2009 to remove a benign acoustic neuroma tumor. They cut my balance nerve so I always feel like I’m walking on a bobbing boat. Sober is safer.
I know I love my mom. I know I am sad she died earlier than she should have. I am sad my dad tried to help but couldn’t. I keep the good memories going for my kids. They don’t need to know about the bad stuff. I deal with my own flare-ups of pain by knitting, researching the different diagnoses my children have and staying close to God by doing Bible studies and praying. Faith has helped me as has my husband. My husband has put up with my ups and downs in a way that astounds me. He and my children are gifts from God and are the reasons I continue to recover from being the child of an alcoholic.