tromboneliness

This is a hard one -- you can always imagine that your Dad would have gotten sober and healthy, and that there would have been this Norman Rockwell last chapter, which can't happen now that he's gone.

My Dad died a little less than a year ago -- he was 90 and never, to the end, acknowledged that he had any kind of issue with booze, even though, ironically enough, the events that led to his death may have been the result of alcohol withdrawal when he gave it up for a couple of weeks. My sister (contender for the title of World's Biggest Codependent) kept trying to get him to stop drinking again and again over the last several years, and then in his last few months, kept flying 3000 miles to visit and... it's hard to describe, but she kept trying to engineer this Norman Rockwell thing, hoping that miraculously, my Dad would have a moment of clarity and make some kind of sweeping statement to the effect of "I love you all, I'll stop drinking, and I'm sorry I was such a ******* all your lives."

There was no way that was happening, as I'm sure you can tell, and right up until my Dad was no longer able to talk, he never appeared to have an introspective moment or consider, even momentarily, the idea that he was not Entirely Perfect and, On the Whole, a Superior Form of Life™. It just was not in him to do that.

Do you go to Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA, or as it used to be called, ACOA)? I think it would be really helpful to join a group -- and, after you've been at it awhile, get a sponsor and go through the ACA Workbook. It's important to process this stuff -- and let go of the idea that there might have been some magic change in your departed parent; that's impossible now, but more to the point, was not something that was likely to happen in any case, as with my Dad.

Good luck!

T