Alcoholism is a FAMILY disease.
Just had a few thoughts to add here...
My dad was not a violent, abusive drunk. I adored him. He had the greatest sense of humor and the greatest stories. I loved him deeply. My relationship with my mom on the other hand suffered greatly due to my dad's alcoholism.
I was the 6th of 6 kids. By the time I was born, my dad's alcoholism had escalated and my mom had become a depressed, angry, resentful woman. That's the person she was all the while I was growing up, but I don't think she started out that way. I think that's who she BECAME after years of emotional abuse (lack of affection and care from her husband), verbal abuse (she'd try to "fix" him by pointing out his alcoholsim which he always responded NEGATIVELY to), and having to be the sole-financial provider for our home because my dad saved "his" money for booze. This is a woman who only had an 8th grade education yet she was the only reason we had food on the table, a roof over our head and clothes on our backs.
My parents never divorced. My mom kept nagging, my dad kept drinking. She became more bitter, he drank more.
About 6 years ago, my dad got really sick. (He'd hadn't drank in over a year by then.) The diagnosis was lung cancer. Because my dad was a war veteran, he went to a Veteran's hospital about 6 hours from our home. He lived there for approximately 9 months during his chemo treatments and recuperation time. The doctors thought it would be better for his recuperation if he went home between sets of chemo treatments, but my mom didn't want him to come home. She said she didn't want to take care of him...it was too much stress for her to be around him constantly, so he stayed at the hospital alone for most of those 9 months.
Toward the end of his life, he requested to go home. He just wanted to go home. An aunt of mine decided he should get his last wish so she drove him all the way back home. He spent his last few weeks in a hospital not far from his home. He passed away 10 minutes before my mom and my nephew arrived to see him that last night. He died all alone.
I was so angry with my mom for not having any compassion, for not loving him, for not caring, for not taking care of him. I was angry but I never told her. I kept it all inside because as cold as my mom appeared to be, she really has a heart of gold and is super-sensitive to everything. I just think that a lifetime of living with an active alcoholic choked out every ounce of love and compassion she could have had for him.
I wish my mom had had the opportunity to go to Al-Anon and had a safe place to release all that hurt and anger. Things could have been so much better despite the alcoholism if she had been able to take care of her own needs. Instead she made sure everyone else's needs were taken care of...including the alcoholic's... and she grew to resent it and him.
Thanks for letting me share that.
Heels