Guys,
I read for awhile. Then I stopped trying to keep up. I needed, and still need some personal reflection. I'm grieving and sad. It is bittersweet that I can do this, get through it, without even thinking about drinking.
First I had to put Skylar, my faithful buddy, down after a sudden illness. Then I found I'd lost a close friend who we toured with in Alaska one year, and were close friends for years then drifted apart. I didn't even know he was sick. Or that his wife, another close friend, was sinking into Alzheimer's. Thank heavens their daughter knew of us and called. I think I told y'all about him. One of the things I realized is that I didn't intrude on them and as a result wasn't there when they needed me. Tonight I started searching for another friend that emailed Nov 22, 2015, telling me she had colon cancer and it had spread to her pancreas. She said she was about to be discharged, and sounded hopeful about chemo.
I had emailed several times since. On Dec. 30, 2015, then again on Jan 1st last week. Tonight I did some searching fearing the worst; it came up on the first page of results.
She died 20 Dec,2015. Her email account is still active, no one contacted friends. She was never married, and had a solitary life ending up as a live in caregiver at the end.
She is the last of my friends of my teens. Only my younger brother would have remembered her, and he died the month after I quit drinking. She was my girlfriend back home that I proposed to before embarking on my Air Force career. She turned me down and later told me how much she regretted it. But she sent me cards on my birthday, valentines day, friendship day, and all the holidays. I never sent them to her because I didn't want the card companies to get my Email address, and did not want to encourage any hope of my rekindling any romance. She never forgot me, nor let my taking her for granted discourage her genuine friendship.
My dog was expected, as they live too short to take too much for granted, and some do. But I'm feeling like a real selfish jerk. I drifted away from my friend and didn't talk for a few years. My brother wasn't returning calls or emails, but from my drinking days, I don't blame him. I was a pompous jerk sometimes drinking. That makes three people I didn't try hard enough to tell them I loved them, and now that they're gone I realize how much I took them for granted.
I'm depressed. Rare for me but I recognize it. Just normal grief depression, nothing clinical, nothing to make me think about drinking, or see a doc for pills. That is the last thing I want when the proverbial excrement hits the rotating surfaces.
No one can help, nothing can be fixed, save my own behaviors in the future. I was simply too lazy about my part owed dear friends. Sending her a card on her occasions to show I cared enough to remember.
And it comes home when I realize that she never wanted more than one of the last friends of our youth. There is no one I can share stories with. Only she was left to share them.
Why does it take the death of those who were our support and only then realizing it, and that it can never be fixed?
I'm fine, and not throwing a self pity party. I'm just normally depressed not clinically. No pills or docs needed. No harm except wearing out two pairs of kneecaps kicking myself in the posterior.
I just wanted to let you guys know I appreciate you and share a bit of what's going on. I know we fret the absence of one of us. It usually signals a relapse into old ways of coping before we learned sobriety again.
I am secure in my sobriety, and the depression will lift on its own and not a minute sooner no matter what I do or don't do. Perfectly normal.
Thought for the day. Hug them. Tell them you love them. Intrude on those who you take for granted. Life will suck sometimes. So will you.
Congrats to the ongoing celebrants of sobriety. My support to our sick members, and hurt friends too. I have little to offer so I am keeping to myself until I do.