Chapter 12: The Light
Chapter Twelve The Light
The miracle of how each individual finds his or her way to Recovery is a mystery. The details are varied and complicated, the bottom line is always the same - I cannot go on alone in this way, please help me. Of course, some folks are remanded by courts or interventions and they stand less of a chance of appreciating the miracle long enough to stay because they were ordered rather than arriving on their own volition. Still, interventions may keep "jails, institutions and death" at bay long enough to give the addict a clear sight of the train coming down the tunnel.
The last six months for me were a fast ride on a down elevator. My back continued to scream, meaning more doctor visits and more pain pills. A plaster body cast from mid chest to hip was attempted. I would lay on my back in it and the tears would roll out the sides of my eyes. I went for a spinal myelogram and the following day at work had a headache so bad I took a cab home and just never returned. So of course I didn't qualify for unemployment. That fall, in his junior year, Josh was injured playing football at Cleveland High School. He tore his right anterior cruciate ligament and broke his wrist. Because he was not insured, he had to have surgery at Shriner's Hospital done by a resident from OHSU. And while he was having the surgery I was in a different hospital overnight getting more narcotics for my back. This was a huge turning point in Josh's life. When his long rehabilitation didn't help him return to playing the following year, he began to give up on school.
Meanwhile, I started reaching out for support systems. Josh was laid up on crutches recovering from his surgeries. I found an agency that would help me with shopping and cleaning tasks and managed to get some sort of assistance grant temporarily to pay for it. Too sick to drive my car any more at all, I went out each night after dark on foot to the nearby convenience store to buy a half-gallon of cheap wine. The last thing I tried for the pain was to take a cab a few blocks down the street to an acupuncturist, who left me laying alone in a dimmed room with huge gold needles pinning me down and returned to send me home when I began to weep and say the Lord's Prayer out loud. Then one day I called a hospital crisis line and asked if they knew of a therapist who could come to my house for super cheap. Miraculously, they sent someone. She came three times. For the first time in my life I admitted my fear of being an alcoholic and also mentioned the pain pills. At the third visit she told me to call the hotline for Narcotics Anonymous, which I did as soon as she left. I was told they would come to get me for my first meeting. That night I drank the last of the wine, took the last of the pills I had in the house, and climbed into bed holding my big orange cat. As of the next day - December 5, 1984 - I have never used drugs (including alcohol) again. I got the message from that one phone call that somewhere out in the dark winter in Portland there were people who were going to help me and with that hope I took the first step.
In the early '80's N.A. was a very small outfit in Portland. There were probably 300 or so people going to meetings regularly. Most nights there was only one meeting somewhere in the Metro area and everyone that was going to a meeting that night was there. They say not to look at differences when you find yourself in a 12-step program. I saw some - I never had a DUI, never committed a crime, didn't use needles, was a bit older than the average recovering addict - but thanks to my flower child background the differences didn't look that important to me. So the first meeting was candlelit, in the school building part of a church in NE Portland, and there were probably 50 or so people there. I listened to them talk about their daily lives and how they accomplished large and small tasks without using chemicals. I also heard pretty much all the practical information that I would need in the coming weeks - get a sponsor, get a Basic Text, read it, start working the steps, get a home group, go to lots of meetings, find a way to give back what you're getting there. At the very end I raised my hand and said the magic words for the first time - "I'm Andrea and I'm an addict" - and I asked if anyone could help me with rides to meetings. Several people came up to me afterward and handed me phone numbers.
.jpg)
So it began, this new life with new people and new guidelines and new hope. The day after that first meeting I went into the hospital and spent three days detoxing. While there I called the hotline again and said I "had to" have one of those sponsors before I went home again. They sent someone to visit me there who, it turned out, lived in an apartment I could see from my kitchen window. She became my first sponsor, worked with me in that capacity on and off over the years and remains my best friend in recovery today, more than 25 years later. We still get together once a week to catch up and support each other. It took me about three months of recuperation before I had the strength to go back to work. I applied to Oregon Health Sciences University and landed a job as secretary to the chairman of the Department of Medicine in the spring of 1985. A little less than a year later I would transfer to the Ear, Nose & Throat Department (where I stayed until I retired in 2006). Sadly, just a few days before I turned 46, my father died in Corvallis. He probably never understood what had happened for me because his Alzheimer's disease was so advanced by then, but I was able to sit with him in the hospital, hold his hand, and tell him I loved him. That August Josh had a visit with his dad in San Francisco and when he returned we moved to a duplex very close to his high school.
This was a hard time for Josh and me. I was in early recovery and very busy working and going to meetings and becoming more and more involved with the N.A. fellowship. He began to skip school and get in a few scrapes. Toward the end of Josh's senior year when he had just turned 18, his dad flew up from California and we worked out a plan by which the principal at the high school would agree that he would receive his diploma in spite of being a half credit short. I don't know if the plan saved his life. He got all the same information I had been learning. Today he has a son the same age as he was then who is in his first year of college and a daughter about to start high school and he's able to pay for their education. I'm glad those times are just a memory for both of us.
Jane reached her senior year at Reed College majoring in Psychology. She moved into Anna Mann cottage on campus, the same building her grandmother had lived in years before. She was using the first Mac computer in the family, loaned to her by Reed to write her thesis. When my mother asked what I would like for a gift with money from a CD she cashed out, I got my own first Mac. It didn't even have internet and cost $1389. That October Josh had a second surgery on his knee to repair the adhesions from the first one. Once again he had a rehab that lasted weeks. During that winter I had a surgery myself - right femoral hernia repair. It was the first time in Recovery for such an experience. With the help of my sponsor I was able to avoid using narcotic painkillers before or after. Unlike the hernia surgery years before, I went home the same day. By resting and using simple ibuprophen I returned to work a week later. I learned how to tell the difference between moderate and extreme pain and became confident I could deal with the lesser level of it without using narcotics. N.A. does not teach that such medication can never be used, just to be cautious and open about it. Many members have relapsed when they didn't follow this guidance.
That spring Jane graduated from Reed and my mother came to the ceremony with me. Reed is a tough school and Jane had done well, even working part-time to help pay her way. She had had her own moments of alcohol and drug use during the four years, but not enough to knock her down. After I got clean, she attended Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) and Codependents Anonymous (CODA), eventually joining AA itself.
In the summer Josh began attending community college with a business management focus. In a little diary my mother left behind she noted pain around her heart after her walk that August. Her hair had turned completely white.
In December 1987, I stopped smoking after my three-year NA birthday. I'd had a pack-a-day habit for more than 20 years and it seemed even harder than quitting everything else. I researched ways to quit and read that just plain quitting had the least recidivism rate. I knew the withdrawal would be unpleasant but thanks to Recovery tools I knew I could bear it and that it would end. To this day, I've not picked up a cigarette again.
My mother turned 81 in February. She had moved out of the house she retired to with my dad and into an apartment after he died. She had only a year and a few months left to live by then. Today I am 11 years younger than she was when she died and I wonder if that will be my life span too. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make the remaining time precious. Her passion was politics but it isn't mine. I'm not sure I've ever found a passion other than to be loving and to be loved. Addiction took so much - career, lifelong mate, and more.
Josh got financial aid for school and his first retail job that spring, and my aunt Marjorie who was 90 had a one-woman show of her collages. She would outlive both my parents, working for another five years at her art. She was my father's eldest sibling and had moved to Corvallis to be near him. One of my greatest regrets is that I did not appreciate and stay closer to my blood family before they were gone.
Somewhere over the next several months when I had turned 49, I got fed up with N.A. and decided to go to the older fellowship, A.A. instead. One of the challenges of a smaller fellowship is learning to interact successfully with the other members. Everyone gets to know everyone else's business and egos get bruised constantly. The twelfth tradition says to remember to place "principles before personalities." It's an ongoing project. Jane and I were at odds too as she worked on her own issues in other programs. But by December and my fourth birthday in Recovery, I had returned to home base. N.A. will always be my primary program, simply because it addresses addiction in general and not a specific drug, like alcohol.
My mother made one last trip to Portland to see me and Jane and Josh. She wanted to visit where we worked so she would have that picture in her mind also. She looked very fragile. Her skin was pale and translucent. She asked me if I was keeping a distance because I was uncomfortable with her health. In April 1989 I sent her a card telling her I loved her and appreciated the thousands of hours of her life she had spent trying to do something for us. She mailed a letter back on April 6 noting that she had received my card and posted it on her refrigerator where she could see it to make her happy. She mentioned the activities she planned for that day. Sometime during that night she had a massive stroke. She was found the next morning face down on her bedroom floor still alive. Someone had noticed she didn't come out to pick up her paper. I was called and with Jane and Josh rushed down to Corvallis. She never came out of the coma. I sat holding her very hot hand, watching the struggle as her body shut down. When we left her room briefly for a bite to eat she let go and was gone. As with my dad, I was not present at the moment of her spirit's leaving. In her apartment I found the note I had sent her on her refrigerator. My extraordinary mother, my enabler, my superior in so many realms gone. No one left now from whom to hide my secrets, my failings, my risks, my worst choices.
Over the next months, I had to deal with all the details of my mother's death - paying the last bills, informing various agencies, beginning to learn how to have money invested. I bought a small file cabinet and kept track of all of it. For the first time in my life, it made sense to be organized. I was able to buy Josh his first new car - a Jetta. And in May when Jane got her drivers license I bought her a used Honda, which immediately required installing a rebuilt engine. So much to learn now that I stood at the top of the family ladder. As I turned 50 in July 1989, my parents were both gone, my last child had moved out, menopause was beginning, and it would be only a few years before I became a grandmother. Woven through it all was The Light.
the sun
is
the color of
joy falling stars mown hay
marigolds sea-sand
cat's eyes childbirth
Christmas tree balls
apricots morning field corn
silence and grief
is
the color of
the sun
Comments
Post a Comment