I got a phone call yesterday that brought what could only be called, "sobering news." A guy Tim knew from high school has died. This is the first of this group of guys to pass away. It's sad to see a 47 year old die and unfortunately, there is a multiple choice of phone calls just like this that Tim and his friends are dreading and they all have one thing in common:
booze. We know several guys right now whose lives are going down the toilet due to that stuff.
Divorces, kids without dads, depression and finally the medical problems kick in and become unsurmountable. Admittedly, RS was not someone we were close to. He was a friend of a few of Tim's friends but not someone we kept in touch with. The first time I met him was when Tim and I first started dating and Tim had a group of friends over to his parents' house. He was not invited but had heard about it and showed up anyway. RS waited 'til Tim was out of the room, came up behind me and grabbed my ass while whispering in my ear that I had a really cute butt. In a bit of bad timing, Tim returned to the kitchen and overheard me finish telling R that he'd best keep his hands off me(in a quiet but angry tone of voice) and Tim rushed for him loaded for bear. 2 or 3 of Tim's friends caught him and held him back while they told R to leave. R then zipped out the back door and split. It was this type of attitude and behavior that the guys grew tired of as they got older and inevitably left R a lonely man while everyone else was getting married, having kids, or just getting on with their lives in a normal fashion. R turned to booze, developed diabetes, and lived with his father, whom I'm told is an alcoholic too. Apparently, he fell and broke his collar bone days ago and went without treatment. I don't know what brought him to the ER finally but he wound up with sepsis and went into cardiac arrest. They revived him once but the next time it happened, they could not. They told his dad that his liver was shot. His wake is tomorrow. I hope that if these couple of other guys who are in such bad shape right now do go to it, it puts a little fear into them. Actually, one of the guys is probably much too sick to go. Alcoholism definitely is an illness but at some point, choices were made that led to that. Tim's friend Mike has told me that he has little sympathy for someone who basically kills themself. I get it. My husband is sick and wants to live and it's hard to watch perfectly healthy men throw their lives away. When you're young, you can get away with abusing your body a bit. When you get to our age, you start paying for your ways a lot more. Gotta try to find some healthy vices to replace the not-so-healthy ones.
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What is sad is that alcoholism is a 'treatable' disease, and does not need to be a death sentence. But when you have someone like R who is clearly disconnected from society early on and who was unwilling to see his behaviors as the barrier, it is even sadder.
Let's intend that those who are still salvagable find their way out of the bottle and back into life and service to others, which is what AA is all about.
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