Lorelai

I went to a funeral yesterday for my friend's brother. He was 37 years old. In my friend's words, he "drank himself to death". As the minister was leading the service, he spent quite some time telling the mourners that the widow obviously had a great love for the deceased because she "stuck with him" throughout his battle with his demons. She did not abandon him. That she was there for him always.

I have seen several famous people on TV who are in recovery for drug and alcohol addiction. Almost without fail, they attribute their recovery to their loving wife who stuck by them. They couldn't have done it without her endless love and compassion. They would have surely failed in their recovery attempt if their wife hadn't been by their side encouraging them every step of the way.

The implication, of course, is that after 30 years of living with an alcoholic husband, my decision to leave him proved that I didn't have that deep, abiding love that the other wives have. Somehow my love wasn't good enough. Somehow I wasn't good enough to fix the problem.

That is just not true. My husband was - and probably always be - the love of my life. My love for him is just as deep and just as strong as anyone else in the world. There came a point when I understood I had exhausted every possible method of helping him see the light. At that point, I knew that the only help I could give him was to show him by example that alcohol is not powerful enough to control my life - if I make the choice to end that control.

I just wanted to say that they don't know - the TV personalties, the talk show hosts and even the ministers. They are not us and they don't know. Some alcoholics find recovery and some end up dead. But it is not because someone loved them deeply or didn't love them at all. It is their decision alone.

L