My father died only a year and a half after my sister's death. I was twenty-eight at the time and I'd already lost so many people. My aunt died in 2006, my sister in 2008 and my father in 2010-- all of which were alcohol related deaths. As I stood at my father's grave site as we said our final goodbyes at the funeral, I was overcome with so many emotions I could barely stand up. I stumbled on the grass of the cemetery, crying over my broken family and all the things I had lost and also the things I would never have with my father now.
My mother was already drunk that morning before we left for the cemetery and somehow she stayed drunk throughout the entire service at the church and then the small service at the cemetery. She was off in her own little world and I almost envied her for the ability to just stop feeling and thinking and doing-- to just be completely obliterated and lost to the world must have been a nice change from the feeling that were coursing through me.
As the service ended, I remember being too numb to move. My mother ushered me along, pulling on my arm but I couldn't stop crying. I could barely walk and I just wanted someone to help carry me-- metaphorically, emotionally and physically. All I got from my mother was her insistence that I, “stop crying and being a baby” because “my friends are here at the funeral and you're making a scene.” She pulled on my arm roughly as she said this and stumbled a bit herself, more from the effects of the alcohol than grief. I looked at her, wanting to smack her. I was making a scene?! I was at my father's funeral, only two years after burying my sister and I was making a scene?! And she wasn't?
I shook her off and refused to get in the limo that was supposed to be for me, my mother and my other sister. I went in the car with my brother-in-law, crying to myself and letting myself feel my emotions. He told me I could cry and it was okay. All I wanted was for someone to tell me it was okay to feel my feelings-- something that my mother couldn't tell me in her own state of confusion.
Two years later, my mother passed away. She fell down and got a concussion when she was drunk. She never told anyone or went to a doctor. There were issues with blood on the brain and she passed away a few days later. During that week, my sister-- my only living nuclear family relative at that point-- was doing a lot of drugs to get her through the week. I remember crying in my living room and her telling me the same thing that my mother told me, “my friends are coming over to the house and you are making a scene”. Then she told my boyfriend to “take her in her room and keep her quiet, she's bothering me.” This treatment continued until we were at the gravesite again-- my mother and father were buried at the same site. Once again I was told that I was making a fool of myself and I shouldn't be crying. I asked her friends to just keep her away from me because I wanted to grieve for my mother in peace. They tried their best but my sister was on a rampage that week and I was her favorite target for some reason. We still haven't made peace after all this even a year later.
I've also had some friends who suggested only a month or two after these funerals that I “look into going on anti-depressants because you're such a downer” or “I've given you two months to cheer yourself back up but you just want to stay depressed.” These things were both said to me within a few weeks of these life changing events.
All I wanted from the people in my life was for them to allow me to grieve in my own time. I still hold resentments from being told that I was too sad for them to deal with right after these tragedies.
Wasn't there anyone out there who understood that I needed time to process all the shit that was going on in my life so that I could sort it through in my head and deal? There were many who showed up for the funerals but afterward it felt like I was supposed to get on with the show right away and show a false face of being perfectly fine only a few weeks later.
It still haunts me today, but I was reading in How Alanon Works (pg. 378 – 379) about someone who had dealt with the death of their son and the pain that comes with such a loss. They opened my eyes to ways of dealing that had before been lost to me.
“We were devastated. His death almost broke out hearts and spirits. I believe we made it through the terrible anguish and loss only because we each believed a Higher Power was taking care of us. The unfathomable agony that I experienced ripped open my closed heart and made it possible for my Higher Power to take over. I can't describe the spiritual awakening that came at that time. Words aren't adequate. But the result was that, after eight years of suffering, I was able to climb out of depression and lethargy and to get myself into action. I returned to Al-Anon. To be so warmly greeted by familiar face, even after all these years, was overwhelming.”
Alanon is one of the places I feel the most comfortable sharing my pain and crying if I need to process things. I've seen people cry at these meetings and I've also been the one to open up so much that my insides seem to spill out in tears. I remember once I started crying when I recalled something that happened to me as a child. I got up after my share and went to go cry in the bathroom. A wonderful lady from the group came into the bathroom, asked if she could give me a hug and when I nodded she wrapped her arms around me and let me cry on her shoulder for a few minutes.
We are all so broken up when we come through the rooms. So many of us have been met with uncaring people in the outside world-- people who really are in need of a good program. As the motto goes, “Hurt people hurt people.” The outside world may never really understand the kinds of things we saw growing up or the feelings that we are left with even after we leave the alcoholic or they leave us through death. It's so hard to talk to anyone who doesn't know what it's like and that's not even their fault entirely. I've always felt like an alien living amongst the regular normal people of the world. Obviously they're not going to know what it's like living on Mars-- but those in Alanon do and together we can make it just a little bit brighter by sharing our own experience, strength and hope.
How Alanon Works goes on to say, “These wonderful men and women at my various Al-Anon meetings urged me on, shared with me, called, cared for me, laughed a lot, teased me, and eased me back to life and to reality. The eight years of nightmares and unrelenting suffering were finally over, and I had survived.”
And how good it is to say that we have survived!
I think when we experience these tragedies that rip us apart and open a wound, it's a way for our Higher Power to reach deep down inside us. Sometimes that Higher Power comes simply in the form of people at a meeting who will allow us to breakdown if we need and will be there when we climb out of our bottom to build ourselves back up. When we open our wounds, it breaks out skin, metaphorically and we can allow either the good or the bad to come into our hearts. We can see that the world is a cruel horrible place that won't even allow us to cry at the funerals of those we love; or we can see that these moments have brought us closer to understanding the mysteries of the universe, have helped us to reach out to know our Higher Power and have urged us to find the people who can change our lives for the better.
The story in How Alanon Works ends with the paragraph, “I am experiencing the wonderful knowledge that it is never too late for a fresh start-- even at my ever-ripening age. I owe my life to Al-Anon, and with its help, I can be proud of the person I am becoming.”
And you know what? I AM proud of the person I'm becoming. I may cry excessively and I may feel my feelings to such a degree that I am sometimes inconsolable, but at least I can feel them. At least I'm not stuffing them like the rest of my family did and getting sick by doing such. I can allow myself to be sad for those I loved and to get through the pain in my own time. I think a lot of times when we fall to vices-- whether it is overeating, or drinking too much, or zoning out in front of the television-- it's because we are stuffing our feelings. So what ends up happening is we wake up, stuff our feelings for that day, fall to our vices, go to sleep and do it all over again. We can continue to do this for years in some cases. We can even continue to do this until we're dead sometimes. I've watched people I care about stuff their feelings so much that I don't think they ever experienced them before they died.
We have to walk through the pain.
What's worse? Walking through the pain for a year or spending our entire lives stuffing everything down and drowning the pain away by killing ourselves?
I choose to feel my feelings.
I choose to cry if that's what I need to do.
I choose to allow those who will listen hold me and let me cry.
I choose to find my Higher Power when everything else goes dark.
I choose life.
And I guess that's the difference between me and those who told me I “couldn't cry because I was making too much of a scene”. I won't take their inventory, but for myself, I think I'm actually happier this way.
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