Dignity
I was walking in the still desert air, early this morning admiring all the beauty: the shiny black bumblebees buzzing around the bright yellow brittle bush flowers, the ruby breasted hummingbirds darting their beaks in and out of the tubular red firecrackers on the Coral plants, the spiny cholla cactus glistening under the sun’s rays. I saw a cooper’s hawk swoop over a jagged rock and it made me gasp in awe – and then my eyes filled with tears – unfortunately not from all the beauty, although mother nature did open up my emotions. The tears came from being out here for eight more days with no progress. My Client is so lost in the sauce this time that it breaks my heart. There is nothing I can do but stand by, be a safe place and make suggestions for him to want to live again. I cannot relive him of his dire condition. No. Human. Power. It’s just a tragedy and I question if I make any difference at all. He says I do. He says I’m more of a brother than his own brother could ever be. He says I give him hope, more hope than I could ever imagine. He says I’m an angel sent to watch over him and he would be dead two years ago if it wasn’t for me. I don’t feel that way in this moment but I am still here on the eighth day, gazing out over the swaying palms in the late morning breeze and the groomed green fairway and the thin slats of snow that remain on the San Jacinto mountains even though it will be 95 degrees today. I’m gazing and silently praying as he lays passed out in his bedroom after another 5 bottle of wine day. He will eventually come to around noon and begin to wretch and puke and regret for a good hour before he hits the bottle again. Blame the ex-wife. Blame the selfish brother. Blame the conniving sister. Blame. Blame. Blame. The demon that keeps him drinking loves to blame the whole world. Yes, he is a textbook alcoholic – but if he’s not willing to surrender, it’s so painful just to write him off, like most everyone he knows has done.
‘Oh yeah, he died drunk. We knew he would. Nothing anyone could do. The odds were against him. He made his own decisions and suffered the results.’
So, I am here, yes praying and being of service, in total redundancy hoping to beat those odds. I know I have stay out of expectation. I know I have to let go and stay out of the results. I know that perhaps I should leave and go home and give him as my ole AA sponsor used to say – The dignity of his disease – which would be a painful death with no dignity at all.
It is a sheer tragedy that he cannot embrace the AA way of life, albeit I do believe God’s energy can work in other ways and I am still going to hold on that I can guide him by example, one more time to find whatever God’s energy of love is to embrace the dignity of his own life.
Living with a loved one who struggles with addiction is the most humbling and devastating thing. It’s ongoing and all encompassing. I have heard the joke passed around by people who meet to find relief and even an idea of God together. “When I die I will see the life of the addict I love (and kind of hate), pass before my eyes.” That always makes me laugh when I think of it. That and the other bitter joke that usually is said in the same breath in certain groups of people who gather together as they figure out ways to admit they have no control over alcoholic and addicted family members. “How do you know an addict is lying? Their lips are moving.” It’s a mean joke and one that always sort of hurts me when I hear it. Because I didn’t want it to be true, and knew it was, often.
There is a gift in the never ending cycle of hope and disappointment in the relationship between the addict and their loved ones.
There is the concept of God found when you are brought to your knees by despair. It’s really kind of forced on you. Even if you already believed before. It’s a way of knowing God that crashes down on you and breaks open your heart, not out of love but out of despair. It is a welcome balm placed on a longing for relief to a broken heart that never breaks apart fully, but breaks endlessly and infinitely. The words leave your mouth. “Please, please, I am powerless, please… carry some of this for me, I have reached the end of my own humanity, the end of pride, I have no more tears to waste on the floor boards before my eyes.”
Suddenly there is God where there never was before. For no other reason than there must be.
The other gift is either when they stop, which is incredible and divine, or in the midst of it all you still take the time to do what you love to do and forget for awhile that they are suffering, or that it’s okay to still have some joy in your life even when you see someone you love destroying themselves. Like your your walks with Mother Nature, Diamond Dave. You are a hero.
Hard earned wisdom and compassion.
Thanks for sharing.
Beautiful meditation 🧘♂️