Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow is a reading my home group does every time they meet. It is very fitting for me these days because I am experiencing the death of my father, who was a member of AA on and off for the last 5 years. He drowned September 10 in the Atlantic sea off Cape Breton Island. I talked to him the night before he died and he was talking about the future, settling back into the home town he grew up in as a boy finally and the kindnesses of strangers who remembered him but who he did not remember. We talked as we usually did but I remember there was a calmness and I was able to put aside my worry about my Dad, was he eating ok, sleeping, would he mix his pain medication (he just had just refilled the script) with alcohol as he usually did, was he finally going to walk across the street to the church that held an AA meeting Tuesday nights. He said his cousin was helping him quit drinking and that he was hoping he was going to stay quit. My Dad was a feeler...like a lot of us. Felt emotional pain 1,000 times harder than the average person and would hold resentments, well until the day he died.
I found his Big Book, 12 & 12, Living Sober and Daily Reflections books with his favouite books like Guiness Books of World Records, Mohammad Ali's Story. Later I would read a work injury assessment that basically said my Dad was ilterate. How many times did I say Dad read your Big Book, he couldn't, h*ll? I can't understand some of the words or expressions sometimes!
Yesterday....I remember the good times when he was there for me like no otherone. The times we laughed until we cried.
Today....the not so good memories are fading and I can truly see how much my Dad was suffering with this disease 2,000 miles away from me. I see how much he did try and how much he did love others but could not love himself; his spiritual connection exhausted. Today I am proud to call him my Dad when there were times that I was ashamed to call him my Dad. Today I hold my Dad's honour high and will do what I can to preserve what dignity he has left. The town is talking about the situation around his death and some of it is true, what they are seeing is the symptoms of the disease of alcoholism and not the life, the person it affects...my Dad wasn't a nasty guy, he was a guy that had the full affects of alcoholism raging inside him...much like cancer in it's final stages.
Tomorrow (Oct. 4) I will take a flight to Cape Breton Island and finish with my Father's house business, talk to the Mounties and connect with family there. But more than that I will be more aware of who my Dad really was and not who I thought he was. It is kind of funny how I know him now more after his death than before his death.
Thanks for reading and your support at this most difficult time.
Karie
