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It seems the further removed I am from my past, the tighter its hold. To my continued dismay the demons I wrestled and thought vanquished prove time and again to be merely slumbering. Many’s the night I lie in the dark and ponder Faulkner’s thought, and I know in my heart the truth he imparts, that the past will always be with me; it’s not even past.
My dismay’s tied to my alcoholism. Everything’s tied to my alcoholism, the good as well as the bad. For no matter how distant those days may seem, the madness they engendered and the chaos I lived bubble incessantly beneath the surface, a constant force to remind me where I’m from and how far I’ve yet to go.
It’s been over 19 years since my last drunk, and almost 22 years since that final drunk began. In those intervening months of sodden madness, cataclysmic events tumbled my life and I reached both depths of depression and heights of despair. Fortunately, at the close, I found sobriety . . . or what reasonably passes for it.
I know the date of my last drunk because it came hard on the heels of my first ulcer, a jagged hole I’d burned through my gut with rum, ruminations, and regrets. On the mend, mindful of the dangers, I flirted with the ‘wagon,’ only to find myself pushed beneath its wheels by the sudden, unexpected death of my Mother.
For a time, my Stepfather and I filled the emptiness in our lives with equal measures of alcohol and commiseration. We were both alcoholics and in our need found solace together. Our past had been troubled -- we differed on so much, and the haze of alcohol didn’t help us see each other’s side -- but in our shared loss we began to build common cause. Somewhere in there, however, my Dad introduced a new lady in his life, and as he moved to re-marry, and I slipped deeper into renewed alcoholism, the old divisions began to reassert themselves.
Mercifully, a haze obscures much of the madness I inflicted and endured over the following years. As my personal life spiraled into oblivion and my marriage teetered on the edge of ruin, my relationship with my Stepfather and his bride grew increasingly troubled. Nor was it saved when, at the nadir of my alcoholism, I chose life and began to move slowly towards sobriety . . . or what reasonably passes for it.
As I struggled with recovery, my Stepfather slipped further into his cups. He was aided in this -- inadvertent though it may have been -- by the acts of his new wife. Inexplicably, she convinced him to take early retirement, then expressed distress as his drinking increased. A sure sign of a couple who married too soon: She seemed not to know him very well. All he did was work and drink. He had no hobbies or consuming interests; he worked all day, then got drunk in the evening as he watched TV. His only outside activity: the occasional evening at his Elk’s Lodge, which in his case meant nothing more than evenings drinking with like-minded men. Now, with no work to restrain him, drinking became a full time pursuit.
By then, I’d been in recovery quite a few years, long enough to believe I had hope of sobriety, sufficient that those who knew me could see its possibility. My Stepdad’s wife saw the change and wanted the same for him.
Despite repeated efforts, however, my Dad wouldn’t discuss his alcoholism, let alone consider abstinence. And much as I wanted to guide his life to sobriety, to maneuver him to what I thought was a better way, I knew on a visceral level this could never be. Attraction, rather than promotion, was the clarion call, and difficult as it was to accept my head knew what my heart could not.
With no success to show for my effort, his wife transferred all her frustration and anger at him and his drinking to me and what she perceived was my reluctance to help. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t simply force him to be sober. And try as I might, I couldn’t explain it to her satisfaction.
Our relationship deteriorated rapidly after that. I wish I could say it was only over this issue, moreover, that it was only them, but a multitude of causes cleaved an emotional chasm between us, a chasm no intellectual effort could bridge. For there’s the rub: In the harsh light of hopeful day, intellectual awareness works. But in the stillness of the night, when every fear magnifies and raw emotion holds sway, in those small hours intellectual awareness does you no good.
That was 14 years ago, and though we’ve lived but a mile apart the entire time, we’ve neither seen nor spoken to each other since. Oh, I’ve tried to bridge the gulf, many, many times, but all my efforts were rebuffed. And for whatever reasons and purpose, my Dad and his wife sheared their attachment from all his children, isolating themselves from the family he knew, separating themselves from the grandchildren they had barely met.
* * *
Late last year, just before New Year’s Eve, word came to me through my brother: Our Dad was dead. Congestive heart failure complicated by alcoholism. He’d been in a hospital care facility for over a year. None of us had known he was sick. He’d been dead a fortnight, had passed away days before Christmas. His wife said she was ‘too distraught’ to make arrangements at the moment but promised we’d be told when a time was set. Weeks later, having heard nothing, I called. She’d long since scattered his ashes, in a quiet ceremony she declared.
My Dad was gone.
For weeks I tortured myself with doubt and recrimination, regret and denial. Deep in night’s darkness I pondered and fumed, wondering if there was anything else I could have done. I’m a writer, so the voices shouted in chorus that I should have written him, used my gift to somehow convince him to accept sobriety. Or, being creative, I should have applied some of my fervid imagination to the problem, perhaps found a way to use his grandchildren to draw him out of himself. But in all these schemes -- which reflection proved I’d already tried in bygone years -- there remained an air of unreality, an emotional clutching at straws, a furtive whistle in the dark that neither scares away the demons nor comforts the bereaved.
What I have to tell myself -- and tell myself over and again until I at last believe it -- is that I did the best I could. ‘What one could have done,’ the novelist Henry James observed, ‘is mainly what one has done.’ And far from releasing me from responsibility, I find in this phrase strength to accept the full measure of my actions, to shoulder both the responsibility and the blame, and despite the burden continue on my path.
Now, as I face the night, I see the measure of my share of blame and I accept that my alcoholism caused great pain, for myself as well as those I love. But sobriety (or what reasonably passes for it) has cleared my vision enough so I might see beyond myself. And my ‘new vision for me’ reveals what to others must be self-evident.
Yes, I am alcoholic and I caused great pain in my madness, especially to those for whom I wish only the best. But then, my Dad was an alcoholic, too. He shares in the responsibility -- and the blame. And much as I made the choice for recovery, he made the choice to reject the proffered hand. The path was shown, the lamp lit, the destination known, but the hold drink had on him proved too fast. For despite every effort of those who loved him, his burden was beyond our capacity to understand or relieve. Ultimately, that burden lay within himself, and I doubt if he ever fully appreciated that he carried its load. And the price he paid was catastrophic: He tried so hard to avoid the pain of life he lost sight of its joys.
However belated it may be, I now accept my role in the madness that has been my life. And with this acceptance, I discover another simple truth: The chaos was not my fault. Nor was it my Dad’s. Alcoholism washed over every aspect of our lives, then discarded us as so much flotsam in its wake. And though we were left bruised and battered, sick and confused, physically, mentally and spiritually drained, our dilemma was not a willfull failing. For despite all recriminations and regrets, the reality remains that no matter how terribly wrong things went in our lives, there were no villains, only victims.
This harsh lesson of alcoholic life, learned at much cost, has robbed me of the fanciful dream I once treasured of finding a better history, of making a ‘possible past’ fill my need. No, I have had to give up hoping against hope for a better yesterday. There are no should be’s, would be’s, could be’s, or maybe’s . . . there is only what is . . .
* * *
Measured against what I’ve learned, the next steps should be easier. But in spite of all the years of my sobriety, I’ve never opened myself completely, I haven’t learned to express myself in levels of understandable emotion. The human heart is elusive, and sometimes, despite our best effort, it remains difficult to express, let alone expose.
But having opened myself to the extent I have, I’m reminded of the cause which impelled me to this examination, and of my need to resolve the conflict between my Stepfather’s obstinance and sobriety’s promise.
My search for meaning in this experience led me down many avenues, some more useful than others. Perhaps the most enlightened insight came from the most unlikely source, a memoir from out of Auschwitz.
Now, it may strike some as strange that I find insight for this elegy -- this prose poem to my Father’s lost opportunities -- in such a remorseless setting, but when faced with incomprehensible alcoholism one clutches at whatever help can be found. And though I know I’ll never grasp the true reason for my Dad’s rejection of sobriety, I cling to the hope I’ll one day understand my own good fortune to find it . . . or at least what reasonably passes for it.
Years in Theresienstadt and Kaufering, followed by release at last from Auschwitz, granted Dr. Viktor Frankl a unique perspective on life and the psychology of its meaning. From his experiences, Dr. Frankl formulated a radical psychotherapy, a form of existential analysis he defined as the will to meaning, in which he sought explanation for why some find purpose and responsibility in their lives and others do not.
Beyond this psychological theorem, however, Dr. Frankl’s enduring contribution to the world of ideas resides in his assertion of what he believed is the core of human freedom, the basic block upon which we build our lives and our psyches.
Behind the camp wire, Dr. Frankl lost everything that gave purpose and meaning to his life: from the material to the sublime . . . his home and career, his humanity and sense of self. Of an extended family that spanned generations as much as geography, only a sister emerged with him to reclaim the fragments of their lives.
But in that shadowland between death and the grave Dr. Frankl learned that all can be taken from a man but one thing: the first and last of the human freedoms -- the ability to choose our attitude in any situation, the possibility to choose our own way. . . . It is this spiritual freedom -- which even the Nazis in their death factories could not deny -- that helps give life its meaning and imparts to it purpose.
We alcoholics in recovery know, from the uncharted realms we’ve trod, that in varying measure we’ve lost some if not all of the meaning and purpose of existence. Stripped of possessions, cast from our families, shunned by society, we were reduced to the most base existence. Yet from this living hell we’ve found redemption in our capacity to choose our attitude, our ability to choose our own way. And having chosen . . . having sought life, we find the capacity to return to the world of the living.
* * *
If it is true, as Faulkner asserted, that the past will never pass and I will live it forever, I’m thankful I’ve enjoyed so much of it. But as the past unfolds in my future, I must remember there is no future in my past. Oh, in my mind I’ll encounter it over and again . . . I’ll analyze it, see it from differing perspectives of age and experience, even hope to learn from it, but I can neither relive it nor change it. I’m comforted, though, to know that while I cannot escape the past, I need not be its prisoner.
Free at last from the stranglehold of the past, finally able to appreciate in full measure my sobriety (or what reasonably passes for it), I accept at last that my Father’s decision was his desired choice. At best, I could only hope to influence him, but when he rejected my aid, he made his decision. Same as I. Only his choice led to sorrow, mine to hope.
I survived my family’s ‘alcoholocaust.’ From the chaos and despair of a baneful existence, I’ve returned to craft a life filled with meaning, purpose, and joy. And despite all the browbeating and lost opportunities, I have emerged a strong and gifted man.
Yet despite my inability to influence my Dad’s life, I still feel a desire to help others in similar struggles. But I accept now that I cannot convince, I can only hope to inspire. From all the debate and expectations, all the wishful thoughts and close surmises, all that remains is what is . . .
* * *
The night enfolds. The void beckons but doesn’t command. The abyss stares back but only at those who tarry too long. Time flows relentlessly, and though the past seems so vivid, when I try to touch it, to clutch it that I might retain some semblance of what was, it sifts through my grasp like fine dust. All that remains, apart from the void, is the encircling night. That, and the words of the poets, the only ones among us blessed with the capacity to understand, gifted with the ability to explain. One poet speaks for my heart and mind:
If there is any substitute for love,
it is memory.
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