Killing Field

Let us pray...

Gotcha!!

I watched this movie the other night called "The Way" about a father (Martin Sheen) who walks the Camino de Santiago after his son dies when attempting it. Now I've got a hair up my you-know-what (somehow it doesn't seem appropriate to say the word "ass" here although apparently some people ride asses on the route) to walk it myself. I don't know if I ever will, but I like to think about it. And I like knowing it is possible. I have the way, the means, and the sobriety to do it.

I can dream. 

Thank you, Sobriety.

So in preparation of my trek, somewhere in the far future, I got up at six this morning to walk. My house in Mexico is on the fringe of our village and it is about a mile into the town center. I walked as far as I could on the beach but then reached the house that is falling into the sea and had to cut back into town. Along my way I passed piles of dog shit, mounds of trash that the dogs that left the dog shit had torn through, some beautiful houses and some houses that are falling to rubble but when I looked inside I could still see the inhabitants slung in their hammocks, swaying like bananas on the banana trees in the yard. "T.I.M." as we say down here. This is Mexico.

I passed one little house that used to be so picturesque with its red tiles and the bougainvillea threatening its very existence. I almost wept when the former owner had that bougainvillea cut back, it reminded me so much of Sleeping Beauty's castle and the bramble patch that grew up around it to keep anyone from saving her.

Now, the bougainvillea is winning and the red tiles are chipped or barely hanging on and she, the former owner, can no longer be saved.

Linda. That was her name. She and I moved here at the exact same time, we got drunk together the night we bought our houses. She was a nurse, just like me, but into stem cell research. She had great plans to do good, just like me, and we talked about opening a clinic here together. She was about 50, just like me. 

She was an alcoholic. Just like me. 

I watched her struggle, just like me, off and on through the years. She'd disappear for months on end and I'd ask someone where she was and they'd respond, "Up North, in rehab."  The last time I saw her she showed up at our Christmas Toy Give Away. Drunk. I didn't see her again. I finally asked someone where she was and they replied, "She died."

So I thought of her as I walked by her house today and the dreams she had and all the possibilities and all of our similarities.  

And I thought of the others. Just like me. Just like Linda.

Patty: My dear, dear friend and larger than life. She gave up drinking for 8 years. Then she drank, Then she died. Ruptured esophageal varice and she bled out. Alone.

Debbie: Came to the Bahamas to start a new life with her husband. 5'10 and that was without the "fuck me" heels she always wore. The most gorgeous long legs I ever saw, I used to accuse her of spraying Miracle Grow on them as we leaned up against the bar every Friday night at Sapodilly's. (We called it Slap Me Silly's). Last time I saw her we were both leaving the Bahamas for the last time. She was a shaking, rattling scarecrow of the girl I had met two years before. We got our plane tickets then crossed the sand road to drink at the bar. We caught the flight together to Miami and never saw each other again. She died the next year. She was 47.

Hilda: I never even knew she drank. But she knew I did. Boy, did she know I did. I remember she watched me with those sharp eyes of her one night as I drunkenly tried to make change at one of our fundraisers for the toy drive, She finally pushed me out of the chair and took over. I headed back to the states that summer and sobered up,  she took a dive off her balcony and scalped herself along with some other damage. We got to know each other better after that. She'd been sober once for 6 years she told me, but she'd never been able to stay that way that long again. She gave me her AA 90 Day Coin with the promise I'd give it back when she made 90 again. I still have it. She died three years ago, her daughter thought she had wet brain but it ended up being Stage 4 colon cancer. 

Terri: A few years ahead of me in school and married one of the neighbor boys. I worked for years with her twin sister. Died at 47 from liver failure.

My aunt, Orvella, a pale specter of my childhood. Died at 53, my age right now, from breast cancer and cirrhosis.

Did you know that female alcoholics have death rates 50-100 percent higher than those of male alcoholics?

But I'm not an alcoholic, I can hear you say.

That's what all these women said, too. Just like me. For a long time.

All of these women were just like me, middle aged women, between the ages of 47 and 60 who had drank all their lives and thought they would still get one more chance to turn it around. To quit again.

God, the universe, and nature gives us all the chances we need, and the means and the ways, to obtain our dreams.

Booze doesn't. It finally starts plowing us under.

And the sneaky son-of-a-bitch never tells us when our chances have run out..

P.S. Anyone that is attempting a Dryuary and needs some extra support, check out the  Dryuary Site hosted by Moderation Management.