Dying from Alcoholism

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.

The Deaths Are Piling Up

My friend Sailor passed away on Thursday. I had known him since 1994 or 1995. My best early memory of him was at a regional gathering we did in Imperial County around that time. I was committed to creating an alcohol free front gate. My van and my boyfriend's truck were at right angles with a tarp strung between. This was the front gate shade space.

Sailor came over to sit with us and he brought a beer. Now what you have to understand is that the Sailor I know hates drunken energy at front gate, but he had to be a rabble rouser and push my buttons. Since he and my boyfriend had been friends for a long time at that point, we all got into a bit. I don't remember if Sailor got rid of the beer or not. That's the Sailor I knew. Full of contradictions, always wanting to be a contrarian, but his heart was in the right place. Hey Sailor - keep up the good work.

Bob Nanninga was not a friend so much as a fixture in local politics. He was the gay, green, revolutionary voice of opposition in white new age Encinitas. I met him briefly once or twice at meetings in the way it happens when you're talking to someone else and that person says "by the way do you know...". Since Bob's reputation preceded him, I felt on firm ground saying, "I know of you." What's not being said is that he died of pneumonia (code word for AIDS I'm guessing as who else dies of pneumonia in their 40s). Remember to use a condom folks. AIDS isn't going anywhere.

For more insight into what San Diego will be missing, read Logan Jenkins' column or The Coast News' Obituary.

A Season For Dying

The deaths are piling up like used tires. First Cyndi's dad, than the grandfather Grant had been living with for years in Sacramento, keeping an eye on G-Paw as we called him. My friend Sailor is dying as I type this and sending good thoughts to him and Catherine. But today's post is about Jay Hays.

I met Jay in the 1990s at Oh My God Hot Springs in Southern California. East of the San Diego mountains and west of the Salton Sea. Oh My God was a free place to camp, soak, or just be. My first trip out there was for a regional rainbow gathering in the early 90s. Jay is a Vietnam Veteran who used to travel around in a school bus with a couple of Rhodesian Ridgebacks and play drums. He is a drummer's drummer. Jay started college in the early 1960s but then went off to Vietnam and came back broken like so many men I have known. He tried to use alcohol to fix himself for a whole lot of years.

A few years after I met him, when I was seeing one of his best friends, he called me from the VA hospital in San Diego where he had checked himself into the drug and alcohol rehab program. That point really marked the beginning of our friendship. From there he went to the old Veterans Village on PCH and stuck with sobriety.

Over the next 7 or 8 years, he went back to college - community college. Then on to San Diego State University where he majored in Counseling with an emphasis on drug and alcohol addiction. He did a combination BA and MA program despite a few health related setbacks that slowed down his progress. The years of hard living etched in his body.

It was February or March of his last semester of school that his body collapsed and he ended up back at the VA. The doctors wanted to do operations and try to fix him, but Jay wanted to graduate. He wanted his MA in Counseling before he died and so once he was stabilized, he went back and finished up that last semester.

He invited his friends to graduation and being the oldest student in his graduating program, somehow wrangled a lot of tickets. When I showed up I ran into people I vaguely recognized from those days at Oh My God Hot Springs. Once they introduced themselves, I laughed and said, "I didn't recognized you with your clothes on." That was our running joke and was repeated time and again as more old friends show up.

It took Jay forty years to graduate, but he did it and I'm so proud of him. All my attempts at going to grad school are inspired by Jay. I too started going to community college a long time ago (1976 or 1977). I went to college on and off until the year 2000 when I received my BA from UCSD but that doesn't compare to Jay's track record. He was the one who made me realize that it's never too late.

His mission for the last few years of his life was to help as many people as he could.

After Jay graduate a few years ago, he was hired by an Indian Tribe in Rainbow Arizona to run a drug and alcohol rehab clinic. I haven't seen Jay since he moved, but we've talked on the phone, email and written each other. About a year ago, his health problems returned with a vengeance. His liver began shutting down. He was able to get on the list for a liver transplant and died on the operating table on January 28 of this year. Jay knew his days were numbered for years.

Jay we're going to miss you. A mutual friend was with him at the end and Jay was worried that his comrades in this battle against using alcohol to fix brokenness were going to backslide and he didn't want that. So if you're out there, please call a friend, go to a meeting, or plant a tree. It's what Jay would have wanted.

John Lennon Blue Plaid Memories

Twenty eight years ago today, John Lennon was murdered. I heard the news in the living room of our flat on Peralta Avenue in Bernal Heights (San Francisco). The living room had a teak laminate daybed-couch-combo piece of furniture and it was upholstered in blue plaid.

I remember sitting on the couch and crying when I heard the news. After some time had passed, I heard the front door open and knew it was my boyfriend, Jeb, coming home from work. I stood up and in slow motion staggered to the head of the stairs. He come up the stairs smiling and in a good mood as usual. When he say my face his entire demeanor changed and somehow I told him something, but I can't remember the words I used. Then we went into the living room and sat on the blue plaid and watched the images on the television.

To this day, every year on the anniversay of John Lennon's death, I think of that laminated couch with blue plaid fabric and all the emotions come rushing back. I haven't had any blue plaid in my life since.

On Bad News

I emailed a friend the other day and used the subject line of "Bad News" and she thought someone had died. In my lexicon, people dying is never bad news.

Now before you think I'm harsh, I've been taking care of a severely disabled parent for over nine years. Think about it, that's before the second George Bush started what I hate to call his "presidency;" perhaps we could just say his "residency" in the White House.

But I disgress. Dying is easier to deal with. You can cry, stay in bed for days sobbing. You can grieve and mourn and then you can move on with a new life or move or go on a date. Sure it's a life missing that person and frankly I doubt I'd mourn for more than five minutes if GW died, but that's not the point. When people live, you have to keep dealing with them. And dealing with them and dealing with them.

That means rinsing out urine soaked pillows every night because someone can't leave them under the water proof pull sheet or trying to teach someone how to say the word yogurt every other day or one thousand, six hundred times since this nightmare began. It starts with a "y." We draw the "y" with our fingers on the kitchen table and out comes "sharez" or some other non sequitur. Then we draw an "o" on the kitchen table and try to sound it out. "Sharon." Then five other words that start with the "sh" sound. Finally I say it starts with the sound "yo" and then the word "yogurt" is uttered.

Once we've established the word yogurt, we move on to cereal. And so it goes.

(Re)Experiencing Death

So this week I have been (re) experiencing the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The reprocessing of my emotions is the only explanation I have for my frustration, my anger, my inability to stay calm in the face of the very small upsets that have occurred in my life.

I've discussed this with many people - the ways in which a child experiences things and then (re)members them, not as conscious memories, but as emotions. I was seven that year when Dr. King was murdered, assassinated in an attempt to erase his vision from the hearts of the people. Sitting here at my computer I try to recall how my seven year old self lived through that day, but am unsuccessful. I don't get upset when I recall the day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated or when the Russian Czar was executed. Yet the fear in my heart is strong for this event that I lived through as a child. Relived due to the helpless way that children flop through the tragedies that adults think don't impact them. After all, what concern would a bunch of white parents in suburban San Francisco place on the impact of Dr. King's murder on their small white children.

My parents grew up in Europe and I don't think they ever consciously acknowledged the privileges they received in America because of the color of their skin. They jumped ahead of natural born citizens in job opportunities and standard of living despite having arrived with nothing but a suitcase and the promise of a cousin's couch to sleep on. So how could they understand, truly understand what was at stake and if they didn't feel their guts spilling on the ground, how could they understand the impact Dr. King had on their children - first generation American born and entwined in America's long standing discrepancies between dreams and reality.

And what does it mean to me. The white offspring of European immigrants who inheirited all of what has come before and enjoyed the benefits that trickled down according to race. I can't undo it, can't revise it, can only try to see the truth of what was and hope that what is to come will work towards the ideals of equality that we claim for this country inspite of so much evidence to the contrary.

So tomorrow I will try to recall the seven year old Karin and how she felt that day long ago. I will try to work through those unresolved emotions and hold onto the dream of an America with justice and liberty for all. And by all I mean Steel Head Trout and Grizzly Bears and wolves as well as people of all colors and abilities.

What ever happened to dreams anyway?