September Articles Online
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My Brother, My Truth
How do you make amends to an active alcoholic or to someone you can no longer reach?
I grew up in a family of ten children, each barely a year apart in age, which allowed us to pick and choose who to spend
our time with. This essentially created many families within a family, with those closest in age enjoying unbreakable
bonds that lasted a lifetime.
Our father drank heavily, so alcohol was readily available to us at
a very young age. As I sat and watched my three older siblings
drink away their days, I did the same, watched by the young ones, as my
older brother spent his time with my two oldest sisters. Dave was my
younger brother by just over a year, and closest to my age, and he and
I spent most of our time together. We watched each other meet one
alcoholic bottom, and then another.
There were few times when the family didn't cast us out when we'd hit
bottom, but Dave and I were always at each other's sides, regardless.
Finding the rooms of AA, nine years into my drinking, yielded little
results. As a young girl of fifteen, too smart for her own good,
with too much life ahead, I was unable to accept that I could be an
alcoholic.
Dave and I took turns sitting at each other's hospital bedsides as
we took turns recovering from attempts at ending our lives. Sometimes
it was I who watched my brother through plexiglass, adorned with city
garments inside the city jail. At other times he watched me, as he sat
clinging to a telephone with too
little cord and not enough time to talk.
Through gains and losses, we endured it all together. He was the
Saturday morning cartoon superhero, appearing time after time, just
when I needed him most. I had never
called, asking him to come; he just always knew when to show up. In
2001, twenty-one years old, with enough of a drinking career behind me
to be able to see I
was alcoholic, I found a room filled with unquestioning eyes and
unconditional love, as well as wafting stale smoke and bad coffee. I
would soon feel a kinship
here, as one does to a family, as I
trudged that road of happy destiny.
Dave would appear, on occasion, to watch me pick up various chips or
speak at speaker meetings, but he would soon blend back into a world
that seemed so
far away, it might just as well have existed in another time. As I
would reappear for family functions or funerals, I would see my dear
brother, looking older
and older every time. I wanted to carry AA's message to him, but I
didn't know how, since he was so close to me, despite the years I'd
put between us. It hurt too much to see him suffering, so I did nothing
and drew further away.
As the years wore on, his attempts to spend time with me dwindled
and, although I mourned the loss of his friendship, I began to also
mourn his life as though he were
dead. A handful of times, over the course of the next few years, Dave
found the rooms through court orders, remaining only long enough to get
a signature for the judge. Then,
as always, he would fade back into the world I had left behind.
Two years ago he resurfaced and, with the help of my sponsor, I was
able to reach out to him. I bought him a Big Book and later had the
honor of taking him to a meeting.
I am told he attended a meeting nearly every day at that time, always
hiding beyond the circle of storytellers, sitting on the floor,
shaking. But my self-preservation
won out. I missed him deeply, but was afraid of the life that awaited
me if I spent much time in his world.
One day, shortly before Thanksgiving, Dave attended a meeting, went
home, and shot himself in the head. Many words were left cold on his
pad of paper, but one phrase will
never die out of my mind: "I can't be an alcoholic and survive, but I
am an alcoholic." I have attended many funerals of fellow alcoholics
who
couldn't, or wouldn't, see AA's way of life, and I would be a liar to
say I never wonder what I could have done differently for them. But why
my dear, sweet brother, my world, my history, my truth, my other half?
All I know how to do is pray, hope my Higher Power brings him my amends, and then treat every newcomer the way I always wanted
to treat Dave, but was too afraid to, for fear it would chase him away.
I doubt this pain will ever leave. Dave remains my reminder that
each of us may be the only recovering alcoholic a suffering one ever
reaches out to.
Dave has been the hardest amends I have ever made.
Pamy H., Logan, Utah
How have you or members of your group had to make amends to someone who is no longer around?
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