On this day twenty years ago I was 10 years old. It was a Sunday. I laid in the living room
watching TV on our television that sat on the floor, weighed 500 pounds and was
the size of a small all-terrain vehicle.
Mom came in and said she was taking dad to the ER because he was really
sick. He had been throwing up everything
he ingested for about 24 hours. We
stayed with a babysitter at home that day until they returned after lunch
sometime. Nothing seemed much different
to me until the next day after school.
When I got home after what seemed to be a normal Monday of 5th
grade, our pastor was there. He and my
mom proceeded to tell Vance, who was 8, and me about what was going on. Phrases
like, “Your dad is sick and he is going to stay in the hospital for a few days
so he can get better”, and “When he comes home he will have to go to meetings
for a while.” I wasn’t upset that day.
From my point of view my dad was sick and he would come home healed.
I can’t even begin to consider the doubt and worry my mom
was dealing with. Her husband was a man
who had drank almost every day since they met in high school nearly 20 years
before. She never knew dad to be
sober. Yet she was standing in our
driveway with our pastor telling her children that dad was going to come home
well…and sober.
I imagine he was like
many young people who drank alcohol in high school and college. He was probably the life of the party. The problem is that my dad has a disease that
causes him to have an allergy to alcohol.
This means that once he starts drinking he can’t stop. So when his friends grew up and moved on he
did too…only he kept drinking…a lot…every day.
My dad had his first drink before he ever entered high
school. He had a dog in Nacogdoches at
SFA who he trained to fetch a beer out of the cooler upon request. He drove a school bus daily before and after
he attended classes. Let’s hope those
were a few sober hours each day (but I wouldn’t bet on that). He developed an ulcer eventually. By then he
was drinking Wild Turkey whiskey and water.
He started throwing up blood one day when I was only a few months old. He had ripped the lining of his stomach, and
fortunately it was able to be repaired by a surgeon so that he could go back to
drinking soon. The birth of my brother didn’t
slow him down any more than my birth did. I would guess that he just got better
at hiding it. We hit the jackpot when we
got him as our dad. He was always wonderful to us, never belligerent or
aggressive. He was so good to us, but we
were priority number 2 for him. All of
his thoughts and actions revolved around his next drink. I didn’t even know that day when I was 10
that my dad had been drunk for my entire life.
He would leave work to visit the liquor store at the very same time he knew
that my mom would be picking us up from school so that she wouldn’t know he was
going there…again. When my mom, brother
and I would travel to visit family in the Dallas area he learned to take notes
during evening phone calls with my mom because he was too drunk to remember the
next day what their discussion had entailed.
These are only a few stories I have pieced together from conversations
recounting the events that I was oblivious to early in my life. When it comes to alcoholics with a problem…my
dad was the real deal.
Years later I was able to understand the entire story of
that day 2 decades ago. Dad had a really
bad day Saturday and an even worse night.
He remembers his last drink was “cheap vodka and cherry Kool-Aid”. Mom called the doctor Sunday morning and was
told to go to the emergency room. It was
there in that ER on that Sunday morning in the fall of 1994 that the doctor
said, “You have to quit drinking or you will die”. They recommended a behavioral health
treatment center or “rehab”. He told mom
that he didn’t have a problem and he wasn’t going. She called in one of his good friends. He showed
up shortly at the hospital and somehow was able to get him to agree. Dad sat on the gurney in the ER and promised
his friend he would go first thing Monday morning because the Dallas Cowboys
were playing the San Francisco 49ers later that day and he would be watching
the game from his chair in his living room.
The cowboys lost that day 21-14 and he didn’t drink. Dad loaded up in his friend’s car the next
morning and checked into rehab within the hour.
When he arrived to the behavioral health center in Tyler the president
of his company had driven down from Fort Worth to meet them there. I can imagine that so many people in dad’s
life knew that it was only a matter of time until dad went to rehab or
died. If a support system of friends and
family could heal him then it would be easy…but it doesn’t work that way. They confiscated his cologne and mouthwash
and he was medicated through detox until he left on Friday. The psychiatrist told mom and dad that he
would need to attend AA meetings going forth.
Dad asked what they were and the doctor said he wasn’t real familiar
with them, but he knew the program worked.
Dad was reluctant. He told mom that he didn’t want to go alone or for
people to see his truck at that place.
He went to his first AA meeting with mom…and they went in her car. Part of the Alcoholics Anonymous program
requires you to have a sponsor and work through the 12 steps with this
person. Dad’s sponsor is one of his best
friends today…maybe because he saved his life.
Dad worked through the steps dealing with so many things from his past
that led him to drink and making amends with the people he had hurt in the wake
of his addiction. I’ve heard that he
even had to forgive Steve Young and the 49ers for the hurt they put on his team
that first sober day. His sponsor
required him to attend 90 meetings in his first 90 days of sobriety. Dad made 123 meetings in 90 days. His truck could be seen in the parking lot of
the AA building sometimes twice a day during that time. For many years he would look up meeting
places in the phonebook and attend when we would travel. God has used so many people and the 12 step
program to heal my dad’s addiction, and in turn he has helped countless people
through his testimony and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The dad I loved and looked up to before his life completely
changed only got better with sobriety.
He was more present than ever before…because he wasn’t drunk. My life is has been richer and more
comfortable since he gave up drinking, but I am able to look back and
appreciate those first ten years because it made the most recent 20 even
sweeter. As we sat in my brother’s
dining area last week over a small dinner to celebrate his success my dad told
Ole Jus, “I don’t feel right being celebrated and admired for doing something I
should have done anyway”, but God has shown his good and perfect will through
dad’s addiction and miraculous healing and that is definitely something to
celebrate…FROM THIS SIDE OF THIRTY.
