Having Someone’s Back

I’m grateful that I didn’t discover my beloved in the barn hanging but not quite dead.  I know what I would have done.  I would have sat with her as she died, surrounding her with my love.  She knew I wouldn’t waver in supporting her choice.  Serving the call of the other’s heart was the foundation of our bond.  Plus, we’d talked about this particular choice for months.  My gratitude for not finding her in the process of dying is knowing the anguish she would have felt if she were aware of my presence.  The anguish of knowing that I would carry forever the unique wound of watching her body expire in this way.

Even had I had known that not attempting to prevent her death in that moment was unlawful, I would have done it anyway.  My devotion to her would have eclipsed my respect for society.  

Having someone’s back can take work.

Dear and I were married in 1977.  In 1988 we split up.  We were children.  We were ignorant.  It had nothing to do with how much we loved each other.  We just didn’t know what loving each other really meant.  

I was, you might say, the agent of our split up.  Addiction of any kind is, at its core, the attempt to escape pain.  That attempt can lead to some pretty outrageous and destructive behavior.   

If she’d been a less compassionate person, a less wise person, Dear might have easily said to me, “Drop dead, you jerk.”  Instead, she said, in essence, “I love you unconditionally.  I just can’t live with the person you are at this time.  Please, go care for yourself.  I hope you come back.”

We didn’t live together for a year.  During that time, we each cared for ourselves, for we knew that, in every relationship, both parties contribute to whatever harmony or disharmony there is.  

If I had to pick one circumstance that characterized the heart of our partnership of 45 years, here it is.  In all our interactions during that year apart, never was there any acrimony.  No blame.  No victimhood.  Somehow we knew that each of us was responsible for ourselves–– thoughts, feelings, actions.  

Early in that year I became a recovering alcoholic.  At one of my first AA meetings, a short, wiry fellow 20 years my senior stuck out his hand, “Hi, I’m Pete.  Didya drink today?”

I thought, “You moron.  Of course I didn’t drink today.”  

I had just recently been confronted with the firing squad reality that if I didn’t give up the life that included drinking I was going to die––in the gutter, homeless, toothless, dead, dead, dead.  Or worse.  I was ready to climb Everest on stilts if that’s what it took to live sober.  This Pete guy seemed to see right through me.  He knew that despair’s resolve, while invaluable, would take me only so far.  Fear sparked the “moron” thought.  But fortunately I limited my verbal reply to, “No.”

Pete said, “Great.  Then you’re a winner.”

Now, I knew that was just some AA platitudinous bullshit that old guys like him said to raw meat like me.  But the thing was, it felt great.

Not long after, I asked Pete to be my sponsor (think mentor), which he was until he died recently, four months after my beloved, a few days before his 93rd birthday, and a few weeks before marking 50 years of sobriety. 

In the early days we usually met for breakfast every week or so.  I don’t think we’d known each other more than a month when one morning Pete laid a remark on me that transformed my life on the spot.

“You know,” he said, “whenever you talk to me, you don’t look me in the eye.”

And so began the laborious yet fulfilling process of freeing the shame and self-hatred upon which that habit was a symptom. 

Another indelible moment, one of many, occurred when I shared with Pete what AA calls my searching and fearless moral inventory.  In response to every saga of harmful insanity, Pete would simply say, “Of course you did.”  I could have confessed to kidnapping the pope, and Pete, not raising an eyebrow, would have said, “Of course you did.”

When I’d exhausted myself, he said, “Here’s the deal.”

“You’ve been sleepwalking.  That’s what happens when our moral compass is out of wack.  The only sure thing is damage to ourselves and others.  

“Now you’re trying to wake up.  Today, you’ve been remembering and acknowledging the wreckage of the past.  This is vital.  Equally vital is not beating yourself up with what you’re discovering.  The past has only one purpose: to learn from.  It’s a teacher, not a jail cell.”

Entering sobriety, no ambition was greater than living in such a way that my beloved would never wonder about my intentions, my integrity.  

As he did many times, Pete held the ground of common sense: “If you need your wife’s trust in order for you to be happy, you’re screwed.  The only person who needs to trust you is you.  Do that and her trust will take care of itself.”

Not long before her suicide 30 years later, Dear and I revisited this story.  She said, “Well, you’ve succeeded.  I always know you have my back.”

Two deaths.
 Dear five months ago. 
Long Island Pete last month.
 The synergy of their influence
 is a sacred jewel.