OP,

Yours is one of the best posts I've read in recent memory. The candor is impressive as is the courage it took.

I hope you keep healing.

Dan

My sympathies to you and your family Smudge.

Sir,
I ghost this site most of the time and I rarely reply or post anything but this hits close to home so I had to. Alcoholism runs in my family so I refrain from drinking. I saw the abuse, decay of the families and the hardships that from the alcoholic way of life. I applaud you for recognizing the path you were heading and then jumping off the trail to get help. Keep up the good fight. Prayers, Del

I am sorry for your loss. Alcoholism runs deep in my family as well. My grandfather was a drunk asshole, my father doesn’t drink a drop. Aunts, Uncles, cousins and siblings all have some alcoholics among them. I do believe their is some genetics around having an addictive personality. I drink casually but give it up for months sometimes years at a time. It something I just decide to do from time to time. I’ve lost countless cousins, uncles and aunts to alcohol related health issues as well as DUI car accidents. I most recently lost a 15 y/o nephew this year who has an alcoholic dad currently drinking himself to an early death. I have no doubt that the kid would have been an alcoholic had he not been experimenting with drugs as he idolized his drunk dad. Unfortunately, he was allowed to make choices above his age experience and dropped acid alone which ultimately placed him trying to run across the highway into the path of a semi.

I am glad you have chosen to change the path you were on. I have witnessed the destruction that alcoholism can place upon a family. Like others have said, I believe anyone can make the choice to stop, I just think it’s harder for those with a predisposed addictive personality. I hope you find peace with all you’ve been through.

Boy does this strike home…. I found mine dead, he was 55. I still drank for years.. Never again..God is good……. Always remember..

Twenty four hours from now, I get on a plane to Albany with my mother. We will stop at my sister's house to collect my father's ashes, and then drive straight up to Malone. My sister received the remains today, the funeral home we went with in Albany cremated him for much cheaper than the place in Malone quoted. My sister had a look in the clear bag, and I believe it may have been a bit much for her. She told me mother "it's not like you'd think, it's not fine ash, and there's chunks of bones in there." We both expected this, but I guess it was a surprise to her.

There has been some back and forth about what to do with his ashes. I had suggested to my mother than we do him like they did Donnie in The Big Lebowski, put his ashes in a coffee can, take him out to the St. Lawrence river and dump him in. That was one of his favorite movies, and frankly, all of ours, so it seemed like a good idea. I think in his better days, had we known we would do this, he'd turn purple with laughter. Then my mother decided maybe to wait until the spring so she wouldn't risk a slip on the ice, having had a hip replacement this past summer. Then my sister dropped the news that she's pregnant with her first and then it was suddenly that we also didn't want to risk her slipping and falling. Somewhere in there, someone said that dumping human remains in a protected body of water was probably legally frowned upon. And then the notion of waiting for months for some nebulous date to materialize to deal with it started to bother me. My sister's in a master's program and I can see some time in the spring becoming "I have finals." And then she's due in June, so of course, that will be a bad time. And then she'll have an infant, and it'll be a year from now, if not more.

I tried calling my sister yesterday and she couldn't talk, she was too busy and couldn't talk until this evening. So I just went ahead and sent her a text and told her that it's been a really hard year for me, between getting used to the idea that I'm not going to be around very long, realizing that I needed to have some sort of talk with my father about sobriety, now losing him, and I realized I needed the closure of disposing of his remains. I need to close this year out with that, and go into 2022 fresh, not with death still lingering. No response until late this afternoon, and she said she wanted to retain some of his ashes to deal with at some other time. Ok.

My mother talked to her on the phone and my sister was apparently hopping pissed off, and felt like I was trying to tell her what to do and such. I think she's just having a really hard time with it. I've been preparing myself for this outcome for this whole last year. I forgave him for being a shitty, abusive, drunk father, and made my peace with him over the phone while he was still alive. She didn't have that, and now he's just gone, and she's not ready or willing to deal with it. Had we elected to have him buried, the funeral would have happened by now. It's just time. After hearing my reasoning, my mother agreed it was time for her to deal with it as well.

So there it is: We're going to take two thirds of his ashes back to the house, and scatter him in the front yard. My sister will hang onto a third of his ashes to do... whatever it is she feels she needs to do with him. Undoubtedly, this is still a result that would have him laughing. Depending on what the snow situation is looking like and where my mother feels safe venturing out to, I'm half tempted to put him in the drainage ditch under the north end of the driveway. How's all that for fucked up?

Insurance company looked over the house, and we heard back from the water reclamation people today. Apparently the water damage is about a third of the house. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a hallway. Maybe more than a third, as I think about it now. I don't know what to expect when we get there, really. My mother sent pictures of the La-Z-Boy he used to get hammered in about six months ago. Garbage, cans, bottles, and ashes all over the place. She said the rest of the house looked pretty much the same, since she was living in a travel trailer and coming into the house to do laundry and have meals. Insurance company is going to have a dumpster brought to the house to clear out the wreckage from the water damage, so I'm guessing most of the inside of the house will have to be gutted and remodeled. My mother wasn't budgeting for such an eventuality, I don't know what she's going to do.

I'll be there for a week, we rented an air BnB so we wouldn't have to sleep there. I'm not sure I want to go in that bathroom, but I'll probably end up going in there and picturing what happened. Mental images I don't need that I already have, so I guess if I do, I'll at least be accurizing them. I don't know. I'll see what the schedule for the local AA meeting is like, and go to at least a few. Maybe I'll put the word out that I'll be in town and see about meeting some old friends.

This is not how I wanted to do Christmas. Last year, Christmas got fucked because I read my diagnosis at 8AM on Christmas Eve. "Hey guess what, because covid, we're not breaking this new in person anymore, so you get an email saying to check MyChart and you're dying! HAHA!" That cast a horrible palor on everything. I got a watchbox I knew I wasn't going to fill. I watched my son open presents after reading up on cirrhosis and life expectancies, and checked all the boxes on "60% of patients with all the symptoms you've had don't live more than three years after onset" a good two or three years after getting them, and wondered if I would get to see him smile on any other Christmas mornings. Now this. My wife is pissed that I only hung a strand of lights over the garage doors and didn't break out the whole shebang, but the truth is, I'm not feeling very Chritsmasy and as far as I'm concerned, she'll just have to get over it.

I had the thought of scooping his ashes out with my hands. Afterwards, I'll wash my hands in the kitchen sink and watch the rest of him swirl down the drain. Maybe not, we'll see. My sponsor told me to pray about the whole trip the whole time, offered some good advice in preparing myself for this. It'll be memorable however it goes.

Thank you all for the prayers and the emails that I haven't all responded to. It's not that I don't appreciate it or don't care. I think a lot of it is that I'm just avoiding it all because right now, it's easier. I owe at least one person a phone call, and that will happen also. I just... I'm avoiding all this and trying to conserve my emotional energy, I think. I'll probably update another time or to and then get on with my life.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
I have to believe we all possess the sheer will to break the cycle. It’s one day at a time.

Of the many things said in this thread, I feel the need to respond to this, and please, don't take any of this as combative. It's anything but.

For a very long time, I struggled with the idea of willpower. Many things in my life have come about as a result of sheer willpower on my part. My wife observed years ago that when there's something I really want, just about nothing can stop me. But the one thing I was powerless over was alcohol. That's the definition of a true alcoholic. That's step one of the twelve steps of AA, admitting we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. That's me.

When I sat down to have some coffee for the first time with my current sponsor, I described my drinking. Towards the end, it was like this: I would need to leave the house to buy alcohol partway through the day, having already consumed a large amount in the morning, and I knew I had to, but I didn't want to. It was like watching myself in third person, going down to the car, starting it, driving into town, parking in front of where I was going to buy alcohol, going in, picking it out, paying for it, going back to the car, driving home, and taking those first few gulps. In my head, I was screaming at myself to stop, turn around, go back home at every step of the way, and not being able to. I felt like I was watching someone else do it, and this was part of my routine. I told him all this, and after a few quiet seconds, he said he went through the exact same thing. I'm pretty sure you two would get along like old friends.

I believe some alcoholics are made, and some are born, and the only way to find out if you're the latter is to drink enough to activate the allergy of craving. I applaud you in your decision to not drink, and for you, it will be matter of willpower alone that keeps you from this. Drink more than a few, more than a few times, and you may very well learn what it is to be powerless over drink, as so many have, and so many will. Every morning, I ask God to protect me from alcohol and drugs, and to guide me to do His will, not mine, and if He sees fit, to put me in a position to help someone, especially another alcoholic or addict. I ask nothing else for myself. I haven't had a drink since March 18, 2020 doing this, but really, I only have today. As you say, one day at a time.

As you release the pain from this and embrace the harmony that you seek please borrow the strength from the energy being sent to you by your friends here.

Your courage is inspirational.
Your message is profound.
Continue your legacy and mission.

quote:

I haven't had a drink since March 18, 2020

Excellent!

House was cleaned out of valuables. Empty gun cases left on the bed. All the guns are gone.

Stolen?

Yep.

quote:

I had the thought of scooping his ashes out with my hands.

Don't do that. Bone slivers are like fiberglass, it'll be not fun. One of my friends had her dad cremated and they spread his ashes at his favorite beach where he lived in Mexico, much like in The Big Lebowski, it blew back on them, and they spent several days very itchy.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
House was cleaned out of valuables. Empty gun cases left on the bed. All the guns are gone.

Ugh, scumbags. Few things piss me off more than people who steal from the dead. Heirlooms and memories that don't belong to you, that's bad magic.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
House was cleaned out of valuables. Empty gun cases left on the bed. All the guns are gone.

That's so messed up. Strangers or other family members? It's often family, I hear.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
House was cleaned out of valuables. Empty gun cases left on the bed. All the guns are gone.

I’m so sorry for all this.

Good looking out, ASG. After seeing the state of the house today, and the theft of the guns, I had pretty much decided I’m just going to dump his ashes in the ditch. Fuck it.

No family here. My sister was engaged to an Akwesasne Mohawk years ago, and my father used to go over there to drink with the fiancés father until he wasn’t welcome anymore. We heard from a “friend” on the rez that word had gotten around over there within twelve hours of the discovery of his body. There were a lot of natives in that circle who resented having that smartass wasicuh there when they were partying. I’m guessing someone from that group. However, it could have been a number of people. Propane guy, water reclamation people, and a neighbor were in there unsupervised. There was a broken window in the garage, could have been some idiot kid. No telling.

The guitars I sold him were still there. They’re in the hotel room with me - a nice Strat I built up of a Japanese Fender and an Ibanez S Classic. I also managed to find a complete leightweight mid length Palmetto upper, complete with BCG and charging handle he bought new and never bought an ARES lower for, so that’s mine now.

Also, I did find a Tupperware in the top shelf of his closet with some mementos of my grandfather. In there, in a necklace box, was a vintage Tag Heuer hand-wind chronograph. I wound it up, and I’m wearing it now. Need to figure out how the set the six other complications on it. I’d never seen or heard of this watch before. Thanks goodness for small mercies. Everything else of value that was easy to grab and run off with is gone. They even stole his fucking weed lol. I stopped counting at twelve dirty pipes and bongs, they’re absolutely everywhere.

quote:

They even stole his fucking weed

monsters, clearly.

If there was any booze in the house, they took that, too. I did find a half a bottle of maple flavored Crown stashed under the bar. I went outside by myself, took a whiff and poured it out.

If I was going to drink because nobody was looking, that was my chance. Had zero desire.

His ashes are sitting on the bar. That’s where he was happiest anyway. Took a red sharpie and wrote “steal this, cocksuckers” on the box before I left. With any luck, the box will be gone tomorrow morning.

Wow this is so well written but so hard to read.. all the emotions, the pain and resentment so raw.

God Bless you Smudge!

I hope you manage to find some peace from it all, now and moving forward.

Take care of yourself...

You nailed it with regards to willpower. It’s absolutely useless once you cross that invisible line.
As a sober guy who dealt with losing my dad a few years ago: Imagine having to deal with all this while you were still drinking. Chaos.
As shitty as it all is, you have faced it without drinking. It may not seem like a gift now, but one day, it will be.
Go to a meeting. Call your sponsor. Talk about it and talk through it.