OKaysez

 

Made A Decision

(73)

                              A Death in the Family

Jay was my first AA death from our disease. He died almost 40 years ago, but the shock of his death reverberates throughout my sober life every time a beloved member of our AA family leaves us and then dies.

Jay was six years sober when I arrived in AA. He was the "old timer" in our group of struggling brand newbies. He was our rock. He gave me a copy of the Little Red Book when I most needed it. He helped everyone in our group in special thoughtful ways like that.

I truly doubt I'd be alive today to write these words were it not for the hand of AA Jay consistently reached out to me in my struggling early days of recovery.

We were only allowed to share after we'd had a full year of sobriety in those days. Shortly after I became qualified to speak I was asked to share my story at a treatment center 40 miles away in a small town I'd never heard of. But Jay knew where it was and, without hesitation, drove me there and back for the occasion.

And then, when he was ten years sober Jay drank again. 

At first none of us in our group believed it. Then we did. Then we struggled with what to do, how to handle this situation, how to get Jay back into recovery?

But mostly, because we didn't know what to do, we just talked about it with each other. 

I called Jay a couple of times in the months that followed and invited him for a coffee. He always said we would get together. But we never did. And then he died. 

Our laughing, pipe-smoking, wonderful storytelling, dearest, kindest, caring Jay was dead. 

Forever dead.

The details, one by painful one, followed. 

Jay had been living apart from his family in a small scruffy apartment. His job was gone when he began drinking high alcohol content mouthwash at work. 

On the fateful night, drunk, he fell and ruptured his spleen. He bled to death, alone, in his apartment.

Our group huddled together like wounded animals. We cried at his standing-room-only funeral. We felt shock, and sorrow, guilt and fear.

 

Guilt that we hadn't done more to try and get Jay back safely into the rooms of AA.

Fear because we knew, if it could happen to Jay, it could happen to any of us!

I've known many AA members who have died from our disease since Jay's death. Some from alcohol itself, others from alcohol-induced suicide. Death and alcoholism go hand in hand. And as the years add up in our recovery we will attend a lot of funerals. The faces of those we've lost will always haunt us.

And this week we lost another. We lost "Nurse Julie." A beautiful, talented, kind, nurturing young woman with a glamorous mop of dark auburn hair and eyes that lit up when she smiled.

Julie slipped back into the clutches of our chronic, terminal illness awhile ago. In recent weeks she had tried to make it back to AA and had attended some meetings, but it was too late for another remission of our disease. 

Today all who knew her in recovery are in shock and mourning.

A friend in the states just reminded me of another alcoholic death some years ago and of her shock when a fellow member said others have to die so we can truly understand the severity of our disease.

"I thought then, and I do still, that was the cruelest of statements," she said. "But it's also true. And it's the cruelest of lessons." 

I have also, reluctantly, come to understand that the death of a known and loved AA member is always a vivid reminder to us that AA is not a social club, it's a treatment center. We go to meetings to keep our disease at bay for one more day. 

While in our meetings we make friends, we laugh, we share, we stop isolating and we embrace our society. That's all part of recovery. It's often the very best part. But it's also very easy in such comfortable circumstances to forget why we meet!

So a death in our AA family is always a shock, a sadness, a reminder that our disease is indeed cunning, baffling, powerful, patient - and deadly.

Julie will be remembered, missed, and her death regretted by all who had the good fortune to know her.

And if one person holds onto their recovery with both hands going forward after learning of her death, her death will have served its brutal purpose.

“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; Love leaves a memory no one can steal.”

There’s a beautiful Jewish condolence meant for sharing in times like this:  

“May her memory be a blessing.”