In this year's season of dying, I just lost another friend. The mother of my first long term committed relationship significant other, passion of my youth. His mother, like my father, died from alcoholism. Too many people dying from alcoholism, yet I take it as a given. I grew up in a world where grownups drank a lot. I don't think that at the time, they considered it to much. It just was. These days we consider drinking yourself into the grave a tragedy - and one that should be prevented if possible. But then again, my father drank himself into the grave at 76. He was basically healthy until a couple of months before he died and then he went quickly - a blessing for him and his family.
Most of the people I know who have problems with alcohol have problems with the world. They are lonely or don't fit in or are stressed by the de-humanization of life in the USA. Some of them suffered destruction of the world they thought they were going to lead due to war. Some of them broke ground in changing the world and weren't able to live with the changes.
As a child of an alcoholic I'm supposed to have issues but I can't tell, because I don't think I've ever had a friend who wasn't the child of an alcoholic.
In the end we all die. I may have been hanging out with the waiting to die set far too long, but going quickly is the key. Of course a sudden heart attack while gardening or walking in the woods is best, but even the swift death of liver failure isn't bad. At least it's only a couple of months, not a couple of decades.
Shirin - thanks for everything.
Labels: Caregiving, Daily Life, Death
