Category Archives: Alcoholism

His Death is Real

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Know what makes death real?

Reviewing the computer-generated image of the tombstone, or as they call it “cemetery memorial.”

The cemetery gave me a choice of two memorial companies for Mike’s tombstone. I went with the local one – they do everything in same small town as the cemetery. Seemed nice to support a local business that keeps jobs in the community and has been around for 60+ years.

The woman who answered the phone was very nice. I explained what I wanted – simple, cost-effective, not flowery or over designed. Just his name and dates. No chiseled angels or flowers. No fancy shape. No “best dad and husband ever!” Just tombstone-y. Basic.

We settled on a grey stone (cheapest option) with no special carving. Since it was a single grave (meaning, I didn’t buy plots next to him), it was actually much less than I anticipated. Of course, like everything in this death business, there’s a hidden fee. In this case, a $300 cost for  the “foundation” – it’s a cemetery requirement, not even sure what it is, but it’s not negotiable. The sketchy thing is that unlike paying for the grave plot (paid to the city) or the tombstone (paid to the mom-and-pop company), the foundation payment is due to some dude – not a corporation, just a dude.

This whole thing can be done by email and snail mail. Crazy. The company just sent the image by email. Of course, there’s a mistake. Mike’s date of birth is wrong. My fault. Thank goodness for seeing the proof!

Still, even with the wrong date, there’s something final about it. Something more than going to his showing or the funeral mass or burying him. Seeing the image of a grave marker with his name and his dates makes this very, very real. And final.

How are the Kids? Ethan Edition

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Ethan. My baby boy. My sweet, sweet pumpkin.

He’s struggling. Not necessarily at home, but definitely away from home. Not with us, but with just about everyone else. And by all reports, it’s becoming an issue.

At home, he’s (usually) polite, very helpful, extremely loving. Away from home (by accounts of teachers and others, as well as limited personal observation when he didn’t know I was around), he can be rude and angry, disrespectful and uncompromising. It doesn’t matter if it’s another kid or an adult. It’s not all the time, but he’s just not someone you’d want to be around sometimes.

He’s overly bossy. He gets very angry, occasionally becoming physical. He will argue and yell at anyone, showing no fear or anxiety if he’s sent to the principal or another authority figure. He argues when he perceives someone is cheating – whether it’s a kid taking an “extra” turn or not following the rules.

He doesn’t sit still – that’s something we DO deal with at home. He’s constantly moving, wiggling, unable to remain motionless. Some of that might be “being seven” or it might be more.

Ethan was dealing with issues before Mike died. He was seeing a counselor in St. Louis, before we moved, to deal with the death of my dad (his beloved grandpa) in 2010 and our separation in August.

Ethan saw some very tough things over the last few years. Once I drove home in the middle of the night from a trip because I knew something wasn’t right. I found Ethan sitting up in bed, next to Mike, who was passed out. Ethan told me he was worried his dad would die, so he wanted to be by his side. Ethan was five years old. It was 2 a.m. After slapping him awake, I convinced Mike to go to the ER. He was four times the legal limit.

Stuff like that is hard for a kid (or an adult) to process.

He talks, quite openly, about his dad’s drinking and what happened when Mike drank. He talks about seeing Mike try to hide the liquor in the ceiling tiles or under the couch.He talks about how mean Mike was to me when he drank and how he yelled at me for no reason. Ethan also talks about how he’s the only kid at school without a dad. It all breaks my heart.

School administrators and counselors are worried about him, especially going into second grade. Apparently, second grad is a critical year for kids socially, and Ethan is at risk. His school has been fantastic, really creating an accepting environment and wanting to make sure Ethan is successful, happy, well-developed and well-loved.

Ethan has a really good counselor here. They’ve really bonded. If Ethan is struggling, he’ll tell me that he wants to talk to Mr. Robb.

Ethan’s well-being and happiness definitely played into my recent decision to step away from my career. I can’t be involved, I can’t be a mom, by only spending 15 minutes with the kids each day. I want to be a regular fixture in his classroom. His teacher and I are going to be working closely all year. Ethan is going to get involved in several social and sports activities.

It’s going to take a while. It’ll be a long, hard road (for both of us), but I just KNOW that Ethan will be okay.

Check’s in the Mail – Still Not Yet

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A follow-up to this post and this one about the life insurance check. I still don’t have it.

I finally received the form, though. And I sent it to Mike’s last-known doctor. About three weeks later, I received a call from the doctor’s office. The doc refused to complete the medical form because he hadn’t seen Mike in more than 6 months prior to his death. (Question that will never be answered: how was Mike getting his meds?!?! Or was he?)

I called the life insurance company – and talked to the same dingaling. A conversation snapshot:

PERSON: Well, if he won’t fill it out, maybe one of your husband’s other doctors will.

ME: OK, but I don’t know of any other doctors. I have no medical bills from other doctors and there are no records of Mike seeing anyone else.

PERSON: That doesn’t make sense.

ME: Look, I don’t know when Mike saw the doc. He was LYING to me about everything. I have no idea when he went to the doc and when he didn’t.

PERSON: Well, a sick person sees a doctor.

ME: Yes…

PERSON (I could hear her rolling her eyes): So he must have had a doctor.

ME:  Well, he didn’t.

PERSON: Well, he was sick.

ME: And now he’s dead.

PERSON: So he must have been sick, right?

ME: He didn’t have cancer. He had liquor. He didn’t have chemotherapy. He had vodka. I don’t know if, when, or how he went to a doctor, but his last known doctor refuses to fill out the paperwork you sent.

PERSON: Fine. There’s a general form you can fill out and sign to give us access to Mike’s medical files.

ME: I filled that out already. When I first contact you. You have a signed copy with a list of the docs and hospitals he visited for the last five years.

PERSON (rustling papers in a file): Oh, we do have that form. I’ll have to see if it’s any good.

ME: Why wouldn’t it be good? Does it expire?

PERSON: No, it’s just highly unusual for us to use it. Usually people who die see a doctor first.

ME: Then why did I fill it out?

PERSON: It’s our standard practice.

Hand to forehead. This is what I’m dealing with. Stupidity.

Living with an Alcoholic = Lonely

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Living with an alcoholic is incredibly lonely.

Say I had to go grocery shopping.  I couldn’t leave Mike home with the kids because I couldn’t trust that he would be able to care for them. He’d probably pass out and not hear the baby’s cries or remember to change her diapers. He might hide in the bathroom, drinking, for an hour or more, while leaving the TV on something wildly inappropriate for the kids to watch. (Ethan tells stories of how Mike let him watch History Channel documentaries on ghost hunting, Bigfoot, the September 11 attacks – all nightmare-inducing docu-dramas for a 4- or 5-year old.)

But I couldn’t take Mike with me to the store either. He’d just sulk and be pissed off that he couldn’t get a drink. He’d probably yell or throw a fit about something stupid just to cut the errand short. And, he’d probably claim he was sober and insist on driving.

I couldn’t escape. Couldn’t even break free for an hour or two to run errands. I used to look forward to my hour or two alone on the weekends. It was refreshing to me, walking the aisles of Target and the grocery store. Something mindless to take thoughts away from a hectic career and work week. I’d review events of the past week and reflect on what’s coming up. Since the summer of 2010 when I found out what was going on with Mike, my weekend escapes became rare – really, really, really rare. And soon, I came to resent the fact that I couldn’t go anywhere, do anything, because I couldn’t trust him to stay home – or come with me.

But it wasn’t just random weekend errands. Multiply the lonely feeling by 100 when it comes to going to friends’ weddings or planning a family vacation or visiting relatives. I couldn’t go, leaving him alone – but I was pissed that I was confined to my home with him and missing the things I wanted to do with the people I love.

Sidenote: When Lauren was born, Mike and I spent hours discussing godparents. But I kept putting off her baptism. I knew I couldn’t invite friends (and our first choices for her godparents) to come share our day because Mike’s alcoholism was obvious. Finally, I felt like we had to move forward and just get it done, so we named my mom and Mike’s brother as godparents. It would keep things confined to the few people who knew what was going on. Don’t get me wrong, my mom is a fabulous godmother and I think she was genuinely touched that we asked her to play that role in Lauren’s life. Mike’s brother, on the other hand, well, I haven’t talked to him since the funeral…

I also didn’t tell anyone what was going on. Afterall, I was so hopeful that he’d get better. I KNEW he’d get better. That he’d wake up one day and realize that he had the WORLD to live for – a good education, a good job on the horizon, a fantastic wife ((patting myself on the back)), and two wonderfully awesome kids. If I told people – family or friends – I worried that they’d change their opinions of him, maybe think poorly of him. I didn’t want them to think badly of him because DAMMIT! he was going to sober up and be the man I fell in love with in college.

It didn’t happen.

I didn’t tell friends until I had Mike removed from our house by court order in August. I’m sure people realized that I wasn’t around, that I cancelled plans or just didn’t show up. They might have chalked it up to having a new baby or a crazy work schedule. I don’t know. But when I finally told friends, I felt an immediate sense of relief. I’m not a pity person, but having the people I care about know what was happening brought peace to me.

But I was scared to tell college friends. Mike and I met in college and starting dating my senior year. It was a very small school, and everyone knew us as a couple.

I called my friend, M, a few days before homecoming. She had Facebook messaged me, asking if Mike and the kids were coming. There’s no easy way to have that conversation over the phone, so I just launched right into it. “Mike and I are separated and I’m filing for divorce,” I told her. I explained how I learned about his drinking and how he didn’t want to get better. That we tried AA and rehab. That it was starting to get bad for the kids. I cried as I talked to her.

She was incredibly supportive. “I’m on your side,” she told me.

“Don’t be on my side. There are no sides,” I said. “Mike needs friends. He needs to know there are people supporting him, wanting him to get better.”

“I’m still on your side,” she said. I smiled.

I told more friends at homecoming. One friend, who went to college with us but also high school with Mike, asked, “What do you want us to do?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He asked if I wanted him to take a side, to not talk to Mike anymore (not that Mike had talked to any of his friends in years). “NO!” I said. “Mike needs friends. He needs you to be there for him. Call him, email him, Facebook him, go see him at his parents’ house. I just want him to get better and I want him to know there are people who love him and want him to get better, too.”

At Mike’s funeral, several of his friends told me that they tried to reach out to him, but he didn’t respond.

I think alcoholism made Mike lonely, too.

“Poor Thing”

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I closed on our house three days after returning from Fort Wayne for the funeral. It was tough, wrapping up those last-minute details from six hours away, but when I packed our suitcases in the car, I included all my paperwork and documentation. Just in case. And I definitely needed it – the entire mortgage had to be reworked (and approved) following Mike’s death. Something about state law… Dumb community property state.

It was important to me to be able to close on the house as soon as possible. We had been living out of boxes in a temporary corporate apartment for six weeks. We had Christmas in the apartment. Celebrated New Year’s. Ethan started school while we were there. But we needed a home. We needed our “stuff” which had been in storage since we moved out of our house in St. Louis. We needed to be settled.

Since closing on the house eight weeks ago, I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to really get settled – after all, three days after the movers came, I as on a plane to Orlando for a four-day work trip. There are still a few boxes lying around. Things to hang on the wall are still leaning against furniture or are wrapped in layers of tissue paper and thick cardboard boxes. The basement storage area is quickly filling with stuff I don’t know what to do with, and the garage is still a mix-match of things I’m saving for a spring yard sale as well as some things of my mom’s from her storage unit in St. Louis (mostly big, giant furniture that we can’t move to her new storage place).

I haven’t met many people in the neighborhood yet because of my crazy work hours, but I feel like I know them. Or, more accurately, they know me.

A couple of times a week, my mom will tell me about some of the neighbors she’s met:

  – “Her THIRD husband was an alcoholic. She left him because of it, so she totally gets what you’re going through…”

  – “She’s a therapist. Now, she doesn’t work with people who have insurance, but she said if you ever need to talk through your grief, she’d be there for you and the kids.”

  – “His daughter was married to a doctor. They had a little boy who was about four years old when her husband went on a trip to Mexico. She didn’t know that he was an addict. Killed himself, well OD’d actually, in a hotel room in Mexico, can  you imagine?”

I’m sure my mom means well, but really? How do things like this come out of a 10 minute “Welcome to the Neighborhood!” kind of conversation?

They don’t. Unless they’re being offered up as part of the intro.

I’m not sure why she feels the need to air my dirty laundry to all the new neighbors. I’m certainly not hiding the truth from the neighbors, but it isn’t how I thought I’d “meet” the neighbors. I mean, if it came out in conversation over a summer BBQ or while watching the kids ride their bikes up and down the street, I’m okay with that. But, I’m kind of not okay with the new neighbors knowing that I’m a widow, a wife of an alcoholic who was going through a divorce and is now left with two small kids. I’m not okay with them knowing all this before I actually get to meet them.

I can only imagine what they think, and from the looks I’ve gotten from a few of them when I’ve taken out the trash or waved while getting into my car in the morning, I’m thinking it’s something along the lines of, “Oh, you poor thing…”

I’m not a “poor thing.” I don’t want to be a “poor thing.” I appreciate the sympathy, but it’s not what I need or want. Especially from people I don’t know, who don’t know me or my situation or my kids. I’m not sure exactly what my mom has told them or how it was worked into conversation. And, I’m not sure how to get her to stop mentioning it – or even if it makes a difference now. Apparently “third husband was an alcoholic” neighbor is the village gossip, so my story is as good as told around the neighborhood by now.

I guess until I get to meet everyone (maybe when the weather is warmer), I’ll just be the “poor thing” on the block.