Too Few To Mention

Gene Gilchrist

Louisville, Kentucky

 So, this is how it ends.  Not with a bang but a whimper.  Who said that?  T.S. Eliot? I suppose it won’t matter soon enough.

 Whimper isn’t quite right.  It’s more like a calm awareness.  I know that the end is near now.  Maybe a few hours.  But I am not frightened.  It’s not just some kind of acceptance of the inevitable although that’s in here somewhere.  It is more like all living things come to an end as living things, as we know living things, and it is my turn and that’s OK.  Maybe I don’t know where this calm comes from.  Maybe it doesn’t matter.  It’s not something I am making happen.  It’s just happening for me.

 I’ve speculated about the end for several years now, of course.  Like most I suppose.  Speculation not in a morbid sense but in a curious sense.  I am 78, have had heart disease and a couple of setbacks so, sure, I thought about this.  The truth about what I did is probably known by my family and certainly the staff.  I have never wanted to be a burden or the subject of sadness for my children.  It became obvious that I had arrived in both of those places.  So a couple of months ago I thanked my cardiologist for his services and announced that I would stop taking my medications.  His prediction seems to have worked out.  Is this suicide or is it more like acceptance?  I am comfortable with this decision, and we will see what God thinks (I hope).

 I always thought I wanted to be awake for that end so I would experience life’s final, human experience.  My girlfriend always said she wanted to go in her sleep.  All silly conjecture now as the choice isn’t mine.  Never was, I guess.

 And awake isn’t quite the right term.  I suspect that I am not awake as far as my family, the nurses, the aides, the doctors know.  I read somewhere that awake and aware and conscious are not all the same things.  I know when someone comes into my room and when they leave.  I know if it is a staff member or a family member.  I think some clergy have been here too.  I know when they talk to me and when they touch my hand looking for a response.  But I know I can’t respond to any of that so how would they know that I am conscious?  Or am I conscious?  I must have some kind of intravenous thing feeding me something because I seem to have been like this for a while.  I must be catheterized.  I must fall asleep here and there because I wake up here and there.

 I think it is a matter of hours now.  I wonder though if maybe the meaning of time is changing for me at this stage of the proceedings.  Has it been weeks, days, hours like this?  I really don’t know with any certainty.  It must be days though because I know there have been different staff, different nurses so there are shift changes.  My son, Michael, my eldest,  has been here more than once, and so too have my daughters and my eldest daughter’s wife. Oy!  My daughter’s wife.    But I am grateful for every member of the staff, every family visit.  I am happy for my daughter that she has someone who cares enough about her to make the fifty mile drive in the winter to see me.  She certainly knows my misgivings about all that so ---- well, I am happy for my daughter.

 There was a priest here a while ago.  He gave me the last sacrament.  I have always “believed” of course.  At the same time I have had twinges of doubt like anyone of faith probably has.  Soon enough I will know.  Or maybe I will just go to sleep for the last sleep.

 As I said, I wonder if the whole idea of time is starting to change.  Is it a gradual transition into whatever is next, and we enter a little at a time?  My son always thinks about time as something in physics, but I never bothered to follow his thinking although I always listened to him go on about such things.  He is a smart and curious guy.  I wonder how much he really knows about that stuff but no matter.

 They say that your life flashes before you as you near the end.  I’ve been seeing that, but I wonder, again, about “flash”.  The time thing again.  Even though there have certainly been happy times, sad times, fun times, hard times, all these memories have the quality of quality to me as I see them now.  It is all passing in my awareness whether slowly or in a flash isn’t important, I guess.

 I am so grateful for my original family.  Mom and Dad were first generation Scotch-Irish.  Their parents fled the famine and arrived in America in the late 1800s.  My four brothers, sister and me were born all around the Depression.  Our parents knew times were tough, sure, but we children didn’t know.  Dad had his job making weapons and it seemed like the country always needed those.  We always had food, warmth, birthdays, Christmas, holiday picnics.  It was only later that I knew meat more than once a week, or new sweaters when one ripped, or trips to summer cottages by the lake and so I didn’t miss what I didn’t know.  As far as I knew we were well to do just like every other family on our block.

 Nobody ever traveled far from Cohoes.  I remember an older cousin who had moved to California, but it was much later that I learned it was because of his relationship with another man.  It just never occurred to us that there was any reason to move or travel.  The automobile was around and getting better.  Dad had a Ford, but that was mostly for going to work or the doctor and things like that.  We had the radio to connect us to the world.  Sure we were aware of “the world” as kids but for the most part we lived on our block.  New York City was foreign to us to say nothing of China, India even Europe. 

 As Catholics much revolved around the church for my family.  Most of the activities for kids were in the parish like sports, and movies and dances.  I do remember Saturday matinees at the movie house.  Pretty simple place, no Wurlitzer, but you  get could Good and Plenty for a nickel.  Religion was important.  Confession once a week, Mass every Sunday, Lent was important and giving up the Good and Plenty was held up as sacrifice.

 There was a Catholic grammar school next to the church and we all attended there.  Then on to Catholic High that was a bus ride.  We were bursting with our adulthood.  I do remember that when the Hudson River froze we could skate to school.  Seems like such a Courier and Ives kind of thing now.  Quaint.  I played football, got good grades, never got in trouble at school or at home.

 Anne Marie went to the same church, grammar school, high school of course.  We would never think about courting outside the church, outside the community, never out of town.  She was such a pretty girl.  Her parents were so very protective, even more so than for other girls in the 1940s.  I don’t think she ever even left her porch without her Mom except to go to school and straight back home.  I remember asking my mother to talk to her mother so I could go on her porch to talk to her.

 After high school I got a job at the factory where Dad worked.  Tom entered the clergy, my brothers all got jobs in industry somewhere nearby, my sister became a teacher.  I took a few night courses in management and that along with initiative led to supervisor then management jobs.  It was enough to support me and Anne Marie and then the Catholic kids that God would decide to send us.  We weren’t married young by those days’ standards but not right out of school either.  First my son, then two daughters.  We lost one boy at birth. 

 Anne Marie’s drinking seemed normal when we courted and then early in our marriage.  A few beers, a cocktail were all a part of being with friends.  Surely her first drink was with me as her parents were abstainers for sure, but after she got used to it, she seemed to handle it well.  I wondered much later if her parents’ abstinence was intentional, but they were gone by that time so I never knew.  She kept a good house, always provided for our household needs, kept the money straight, paid the bills, was there for the children.  We had friends both in the family and with peers.  We bought a house and a nice car.  Enter the 1950s, we were on the path to the American dream.

 Looking back, I wonder if it was too late by the time I realized she had a problem.  “No matter how far down the scale one has gone,” they say in AA, but I wonder.  There were times when she slurred her words with me or friends.  She had trouble with a hangover sometimes but always seemed to pull it together.

 We started to keep beer in the house after a while.  We kept liquor that I always thought was for company.  Of course, I drank too.  I would take my turn for the weekly poker night with the guys and always had beers for them.  I had an occasional hangover.  But it started to be clear to me that her drinking and mine were different things.  She wanted a cocktail every night, me once in a while.  She wanted a second, me not so often.  She would have a drink late at night when I was asleep, but I only occasionally noticed.

 We drank with our friends, and she had women friends, and they would drink sometimes when they got together.  I was so naïve then that I thought that since no one else said anything to affirm my worries that it was me who was paranoid.  Of course, later I learned that everybody was worried, but no one wanted to bring it up first or even at all.

 Between my eldest daughter and my youngest we lost a premature boy.  Neonatal medicine wasn’t as advanced to save a “premie” then.  Clearly, her drinking while pregnant interrupted normal fetal development and decreased her chances of delivering a healthy baby.  My youngest, Annie, was also born early but she had everything developed that she needed to survive although she was in the hospital for a month. 

 Annie certainly had the worst of the genetic effects.  We know about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome now though we didn’t then.  She has always had learning and attention problems.  Weight is a serious issue for her.  Her learning issues probably creep into her social skills and though she is a nice young woman she tends to be shy and never knows the right thing to say.  She was “socially progressed” through high school and has a hard time getting and keeping a job.  She lived with me right up until now.

 Much later in Al-Anon I understood how many times I made the wrong choice.  Who is prepared for the alcoholic spouse though?  It’s not like in high school they offered a course in “Living with a Drunk”.  Nobody ever talked about it at all.  Sure, we all had a weird uncle, but he was usually single or divorced and we just didn’t talk about it.  Dad always got him home or he slept on our couch and was gone in the morning.

 Thank God she didn’t drink in bars.  Ladies just didn’t do that back then.  At least I always knew where she was.  The bad behavior with friends came.  I would make excuses about get togethers with friends or families when she was too drunk or too hungover to go out or even get out of bed.  Just as well as she could turn into a disaster at any event.  We were eventually just in our house, alone, with the kids.  Of course, I came to understand that my family and friends all understood what was going on.

 I feared what would happen when I went to work.  I could get the kids off to school and by then the eldest could kind of keep order for a few hours after school.  That just wasn’t fair, of course, but what could I do; or so I thought. 

 Then the blackouts and the truly aberrant behavior started and long stretches in bed, sometimes days, although I knew that after I went to bed in another room, she snuck up to get a drink.  Probably she needed it just to stay away from DTs or something.  I would find her passed out on the couch, sometimes naked.  Once the gas stove was lit in the morning and for who knows how long.  There were car accidents but mostly fender benders.  The drunken sexual advances were awful but avoidable.  On too many occasions my son would call work desperate because she had fallen, and he wanted to call an ambulance.  I had waited, frozen in place, not knowing what to do and now for too long,

 I finally worked up the courage to talk to Fr. Tom.  He knew what was going on at some level of course and had done the research on rehab centers.  Tom had consulted with a street priest who worked with alcoholics named Fr. Dunne.  Hazelden was operating then, and the treatment centers in New York were modeled after that mostly rural, twenty-eight days, mostly self-pay but not too expensive.  Tom had connected with Al-Anon and we agreed that that would be a good start.

 I guess I expected a room full of tears so was surprised to be greeted by smiles and handshakes.  There weren’t so many men in Al-Anon back then but it was good that there were a couple of guys.  They were a bit older and seemed to be fairly well settled in this Al-Anon business.  I mostly listened that first night and recall being struck with how similar all their stories were and how similar they were to mine.  They talked about an allergy, and shaking off guilt, and the hand of God.  I don’t know that I went home with any answers that night, but I felt comfortable and knew that I would return.

 When I finally worked up the nerve to talk to Anne Marie it was more like a lecture than I had hoped.  She was silent, cried, never said a word, and went right to what had become her room.  Two days later I tried again and two days later again.  Finally, she agreed to have two women from AA visit the house if I took the kids with me for a couple of hours.  Apparently, something clicked as she agreed to attend meetings with them.  Maybe she was just trying to get me off her back.  No matter, I thought, it was a start.  For the next six weeks we had a routine of early dinner so Anne Marie could get picked up by the ladies for an early evening meeting a couple of times a week.  We all walked on eggshells but for those six weeks things were better.

 They say that relapse isn’t required but it is common, and our turn came after a few weeks.  I was warned that it would be heavy, and it was.  A few weeks later I found her passed out and unresponsive one morning.  Scared, I called the ambulance, and this started our first of many hospital visits.  Sometimes the doctors would talk her into a twenty-eight day program sometimes she would be home in a day or two checking herself out from the hospital. 

 The next three or four years were a merry-go-round of AA, hospital, rehab, drink, repeat.  Thank goodness I maintained a connection with Al-Anon.  Everyone was wonderful – family, friends, the elder children now in high school then college, clergy – but only in Al-Anon was there a true understanding or connection not through the spouse but connected to the spouse if that makes sense. As the years went on and things got progressively worse my twelve-step friends helped me understand that the day may come when it would stop being about Anne Marie and start to be about me and my daughter.  I am glad that they were patient with me on that front.

 The cycle of AA and hospital and rehab was occasionally sprinkled with car crashes and public arrests wandering the streets.  My two eldest were out of the house but my youngest daughter and I had to leave.  I left Anne Marie in the house, left her a car, once a week snuck in with groceries and cash.  I didn’t know what would happen now, but I knew what had to be done.  My daughter and I moved into an apartment near her school and a short commute to work.

 My irregularity at work had cost me promotions before.  Now I had to make room for younger colleagues in the job that I occupied.  I was demoted to afternoon supervisor, but they kept my salary steady even if I missed out on raises after that.  I was able to keep a good household for my daughter and me, got her off to school, arranged for a neighbor to check in on the goings on of an unsupervised but pretty good kid.  We had a good life, all things considered.  My son and eldest daughter, Susie, had gone away to college but returned for holidays and on break.  I had a spare room for them and a sofa bed when they came at the same time.

 I don’t think that any of my children went to Al-Anon and I stopped after a while.  Susie moved in with her girlfriend about an hour away.  Michael took over checking on Anne Marie after he returned from school and started graduate school.  He took over when the hospital visits continued and eventually moved her on a couple of occasions as staying in our old home was eventually going to be a disaster of some sort.  The proceeds from the sale of the house helped.  I think that Susie had the hardest go of all this, and I offered on a couple of occasions to talk about it, suggested Al-Anon.  In the long run it seemed as if for all of us it just subsided.  I know that these adverse life circumstances don’t just go away.  But for us everything faded into the silence.

I started to notice a little shortness of breath walking the factory floor at night or taking in the groceries, things like that.  I had always been healthy though I had been a smoker, and my diet was flat out terrible.  My local, neighborhood PCP sent me to a cardiologist who diagnosed me with coronary artery disease.  I had clogged arteries.  In those days the only approach was bypass surgery, and I had that done at Albany Medical Center right around my sixtieth birthday.   Fr. Tom and my son were there when they wheeled me out of the room.   Even in those days the risk was small, and I was able to make a full recovery.  There was a one week hospital stay and then three weeks of careful recovery at home.  My daughter was able to take care of me just fine.  She had finished high school and had not found stable employment at that point.

 A few of the Al-Anon guys found out about my situation and asked my daughter if they could visit.  I was so very grateful.  A few years had passed since I had left Anne Marie in our home, and I had tailed off from meetings entirely.  At first it was laughter and reconnection, but my tears came quickly.  Maybe it was all the medication I was taking.  I had such guilt.  I had not intervened in time, my children paid the price, my daughter had fetal alcohol syndrome, Anne Marie was nearly a ward of the State.  All my fault.  Typically, they did not deny my guilt and even talked about shame.  As always, the shared experience gave me comfort.  I couldn’t let this all out with anybody but these guys.  I made some promises to attend with them again but that was the last I saw of those guys.  I have warm, fond memories to this day.

 My two oldest were finding their way.  They both graduated from college and my son was in graduate school.  He had scholarships, grants, loans and taught college.  My daughter pursued a master’s degree in social work and was working with adults with mental health issues.  Most of her clients lived in group homes.  My son was single but living with a very nice woman who was also a social worker.  Susie’s romantic relationship was clearly stable, and they have been together for almost thirty years now.  I guess my son is right that gay folks have been there all along, but society just didn’t want to talk about it.  That caused all kinds of hidden relationships and that wasn’t fair.  Maybe he’s right.  It was just difficult for this Irish Catholic boy to get comfortable with these relationships.  I hope I did my best there and warmed up a little at least at the end.

 As I mentioned, my daughter stayed in her college town fifty miles away, so most of the attending to Anne Marie fell to my son.  One day he told me that she had become what we then called “wet brained”.  She had taken enough alcohol, and enough brain events had occurred that she was no longer mentally capable.  She was in a home that her health insurance covered.  As he told me, she was confined, well taken care of or at least as well as we could hope. 

 Finally the day came when Michael visited to tell me that Anne Marie had passed.  Apparently, she was strapped in a bed for her own safety.  She was being fed when she suffered a stroke and died quickly.  We held a brief service first at the funeral parlor then in church.  Me, my three children, Susie’s partner, Anne Marie’s cousin, my surviving sister and Fr. Tom who conducted the service.  She is buried in our plot at St. Matthew Cemetery where I will join her and our premature son soon enough.

 Twelve years have passed, and my life has been a good one.  Michael completed the Ph.D. and teaches at Russell Sage College.  Susie is married!  Goodness that gay marriage stuff has all happened so fast but, I suppose, fast for me not for gay folks.  She still has her job at social services.  Annie has moved in with Susie and her wife and that is a good solution.  Fr. Tom passed away a few years ago and it is just me and my sister surviving now.

 I never returned to Al-Anon but I have been active in the Senior Center.  There is lots to do there, and I have several guy friends.  I have remained active in the church, too, and all-in-all I have led an active life.  I have a lady friend from the Center, but that relationship is much more about company and comfort than the romance it meant to me as a younger man.

 I am smiling at least on the inside.  I know there is a God and s/he (how’s that Susie, better?) has been good to me.  How could I have imagined this path and where it would lead?  I think that we start out to take life and life takes us instead.  My only goal was to lead the life of a good man, a Catholic man, to be a good family member, a good husband, a good father.  My conscience is clear that I did best.  Regrets?  I have a few.  Too few to mention.  Thanks, Frank.

I am told that there are forty million Americans with an alcohol or drug problem.  Ninety-four percent never get clean and sober.  94%!   Forty million spouses/partners, one hundred million children, countless parents, siblings, friends.  And still today we sneak around to the back door of St. Mary’s, after dark, to share coffee, to share our experience, strength and hope.  But we keep a secret.  When will this all be something we can talk about?  When will we be able to put away the shame? 

 I had a good life.  Much of what I wanted I found – family, children, a job, the comfort of my church.  And when life took me, when the woman I loved was taken by alcohol, I did my job.  I made mistakes, sure, but I always did my best.  Everything I did, I did with love.  It wasn’t like I “let love lead” as the counselors always say.  It is just that love was built in by Mom and Dad, by my brothers and sister, by my children.  I never stopped loving Anne Marie.  I hope that when I join her soon it will be in some form of peace.  When my son was here recently he said, “Thanks, Dad, you did your job.  You did a great job.”  No higher praise.

 There is someone else here now.  Or is it some-thing?  I wonder what it is?  I can’t quite tell.  Curious.  But I am sleepy again.  Is this the final sleep?  Perhaps I will know.  Perhaps I will not.  It is OK.

                                                                            ***********

 Agnes was alone with Andrew, reading her book, keeping a half eye on him.  Watching, keeping vigil.  She wasn’t looking when he left, but suddenly she knew he was no longer there.  She stood and looked for just a moment in silent thought.  How ironic that it was just him and her at the final moment.  She walked down the hall until she found her wife.  “Susie, I think your Dad is gone.”