Retreat

For the first time in about four years all the stars aligned and I was able to go on our church's "Women's Retreat" for the weekend. Once Hubby got so awful that it was not safe to leave the boys for a weekend away I stopped all such travels. Now that my mother is finally retired (she retired from full-time high school teacher at age 82! Go Mom!) she can stay with the boys.

These retreats are of an inspirational nature. This one focused on "cups" and filling our cup and emptying our cup and how God holds us in both hands like a cup et al. Most of this stuff is simply common sense if you think about it; but whoever thinks about it unless one is on a lovely retreat in a beautiful lakeside conference center? So - that makes such retreats a good thing to go on.

Another thing that the retreat reminded me of (and which is a bit of a "theme" of our little blog community) is the idea that one is not alone in one's suffering. Often times we look at others and think that they have it all together only to discover that they are struggling with some awful stuff! Things discovered on this retreat included family member suicides, sons in prison, extreme anxiety disorders.... all confessed by outwardly calm, collected, beautifully-coiffed women. Many were unaware of the situation that I had gone through with Hubby. It all makes one feel better to know that one is not alone.

My wish for all readers today is that you get a "retreat". Maybe you don't get a nice weekend getaway to the lake but I hope you are able to take a few moments of alone time and silence. You are not alone - my thoughts are always with you.

The other day I was listening to the soundtrack to the movie, The Crow. I know - dreadful stuff - one of Hubby's favorite movies (he had terrible taste in movies - the more blood, the better!) but the soundtrack is a wonderful "set piece" of early 90's industrial music. I mean, it had been FOREVER since I had listened to Nine Inch Nails or Rage Against The Machine...took me back!

Lyrics of one song struck me as appropriate here: "Oh, it won't rain all the time. The sky won't fall forever. And though the night seems long, your tears won't fall forever." Here's to the morning for all of us....

A Homecoming New Year's Wish for You All

Well, it is obvious that it has been a long time since I posted. 2014 was a very busy year and for a single mom with two teenage sons, it got a little crazy. In many ways that is not a bad thing; it means that life is returning to "normal". There are still flashbacks and my oldest son requested to go back into therapy again; he was fine and then suddenly he wasn't so I am fortunate that a great new therapist was right there when he was needed.

I have a friend from college who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and had to immediately have a double mastectomy. After several weeks of Facebook silence she posted again saying that she was now needing to "do less reading in the breast cancer survivor blog community" and could return more to her typical social media pursuits. She needed that community and then she needed that community just a little less....

Because we - the survivors of our alcoholics and other persons with substance abuse "issues" - sometimes need our community a little bit more and then maybe a little bit less.....

Back to blogging - this is an entry that I was planning to write in late October during the typical American High School Football "Homecoming Season". This was my oldest son's first high school Homecoming and as he is a "football star" on the district-winning freshman team, it was kind of a big deal for him. In the South and especially in MY state, Homecoming takes on mythic proportions. Let's just say that there was a big game, and a pretty girl with a mum (Google "Texas Homecoming Mums" to see what I mean) and a dance.

Those of us who live with and/or lived with alcoholics and other substance abusers know that eventually "homecomings" become fraught with tension, anxiety and peril. Hubby towards the end spent all of his time in the garage and as I would pull up in the driveway with the boys, the three of us would speculate aloud as to whether we were coming home to "good Dad" or "bad Dad". "Good Dad" would look up from his garage desk and smile and say, "Hey, how's it going?". "Bad Dad" would just either frown and grunt or immediately spout out something dreadful like, "Munchie (the cat)threw up on the kitchen floor again; I was tempted to shoot her." If we saw that it was going to be "Good Dad", we would all audibly breathe a sigh of relief. Signs of "Bad Dad" just brought sighs of misery. One day my oldest son came home from school with his friends and "Bad Dad" was sitting in a puddle of his urine crying...is it any wonder the poor boy needs therapy?

Sometimes Hubby would be passed out in the bedroom. We would all tip toe around so as not to wake him and so as to enjoy the quiet peacefulness of it almost being like he wasn't there at all.....

I wish "Good Dad" (or "Good Mom" or "Good Son" or "Good Sister") homecomings for all of you in 2015. But when they are not good homecomings, I wish for you that you have the strength to endure. And maybe, just maybe it might be time to think about the quiet peacefulness of them not being there at all....

Get out if you need to get out; stay in if your heart and head tells you to stay in.....nothing to be ashamed of or feel badly about... Either way, I am thinking of you all and hope that you use our community when you need it and that someday you may need it just a little less....

Widows' Weeds

Folks who know me well know that I have a rather bizarre sense of humor. I keep being bombarded with ads for this t-shirt on my Facebook page:

I can't help but think, "...awaits me on the Other Side...in a bar...with a drink in his hand..." Whee! ;-P (I am so awful!) More serious and useful stuff soon!

Know Your Rights

I was recently chagrined to read comments on another related blog by someone who is obviously going through a great deal of financial hardship due to her husband's end stage alcoholism and death. It is prompting me to expand my comments to her here. Depending on where you live and your employment and financial status, this may help you. This is certainly not certified advice from a professional - it is simply what I experienced when I went through this. A lot of this advice is very cold-hearted but these things must be said.

1. The minute you know that your spouse is going down the tubes you need to spring into financial action. Don't lie to yourself - you know full well that your spouse is not going to ever recover no matter how much you must wish and pray and now it is "every man and woman for him/herself" before the ship sinks. I "comforted" my guilt feelings about this by reminding myself that I was doing my darnedest to preserve a good life for my sons. You must do this too - do not let your alcoholic ruin your children's lives or your life. Yes - you DO deserve a good life after all the hell you have been through. So start circling the wagons and prepare for the future.

2. Once you have accepted the fate of your alcoholic immediately start laying aside financial reserves. You must get a checking account in your name only OR make sure that your existing joint checking account with your alcoholic is in your name with the alcoholic as only a co-signer. Because once they die, your assets will be frozen by the bank if it is a joint account and it is a big pain in the butt to have to open an account in the name of the estate executor. If money is going into the joint checking account, move as much as you can into your own bank account each month. Since by this time you are probably paying all the bills anyway because your alcoholic just can't be bothered, they will never notice. Just leave enough so they can have their "allowance" with their debit card and not feel any financial pinch. You start paying all the bills from your own checking account instead. Really - they will never know.

3. If you all don't have wills - get them! Make sure your alcoholic has a will. Make sure your alcoholic has a living will and/or "do or do not resusitate" order. Because more than likely your alcoholic will slip into a coma and you will have to make the decision whether or not to keep them on life support after considerable brain damage. Make sure that you are clear on your alcoholic's wishes regarding organ donation because if your alcoholic is in a coma, those organ donor folks are going to come calling. A patient in a coma is their best chance of getting good organs. Hubby had both a living will and a "please donate everything possible" order so when the hospital staff came to me about both issues, they had a legal document telling them exactly what to do. And as for the organ donation - it will make YOU feel SO MUCH BETTER if they donate their organs! Because out of tragedy for you has come a miracle for someone else. Amazingly, Hubby's kidneys saved two lives. And his retinas gave eyesight to two folks who were blind and his cartilage assisted someone who needed surgery so they could walk. Every letter I got from the organ donation folks was like a little blessing - made me and my sons feel so much better. (by the way - have a "hospital bag" packed and ready to go - the bag should have the will, the living will and the organ directive in it; also already know what funeral home you want your alcoholic to go to. You MUST have answers to all these questions at the hospital and you will be so upset and grief-stricken that you will want those docs well in hand so you can give them to the right folks and just go and have a good cry in the bathroom).

4. Take out a big life insurance policy on your alcoholic and make sure that there is no "no pay if it is alcohol-related" clause. It must be "no fault life insurance." You are going to need that money and that is the money that your alcoholic would have made for you had he or she not been a victim of this terrible disease and thus could not make it. Dying from alcoholism is like dying from incurable cancer - they are diseases. At the very least, make sure that you get one of those little $5000 policies that are usually for burials etc. They will go far in alleviating considerable death expenses you will incur. Those little policies usually come free of charge from your employer or your bank or your credit cards. Check on that. Also - get a mortgage insurance policy if you own a home that pays for the home outright in the case of the death of a spouse if your spouse is the alcoholic in your life. Remember that life insurance benefits are not taxable income.

5. You probably don't owe as much money to creditors as you think you do. A lot of it depends on how your family finances are set up and also on the community property laws in your state. In the case of a death of a spouse, community property laws can help you. It means that they cannot come rushing in and take your house for example. It also means that you may not have to pay all of any credit card bills that were run up. If a credit card was in your alcoholic's name, you are usually not responsible for any of it (depending on the law and if your bank wants to be jerks - I was fortunate that Hubby's bank did not want to be jerks. Be careful though - make sure that they do not do the debt forgiveness as a "charge off" - get a letter from them officially stating that the debt is forgiven. Because it may show up as a charge off in your alcoholic's credit record which could hurt if you are applying for a mortgage in the future.)

At the very least, you would only be responsible for 50 percent of an alcoholic's credit card bill because community property means everything is split 50/50 even debt. You may even be able to negotiate with your bank on how much you owe on your mortgage. A good estate attorney will help you with all of this - they know the law.

Then you get an estate attorney (see wills above). If your alcoholic died with a ton of medical bills like mine did, all those hospitals are going to come gunning for you for their payments. Well, the estate attorney and you (or whoever is the executor of the will - probably YOU) make an inventory of your alcoholic's estate. YOUR HOUSE IS NOT PART OF YOUR ALCOHOLIC'S ESTATE!!!! It CANNOT be used to fulfill estate credit obligations! Neither can CARS!!!!!! If your alcoholic is like mine and died without a job or income - basically penniless - their estate is only their personal property that can be sold for a significant price. In the case of Hubby - the only thing he had of value that was his alone and not turned over to me as community property right of survivorship - was his gun collection. I had to have those appraised and then turn in that value as his "estate." Then the guns were sold and that pot of money was all the money that the creditors (hospitals) could claim against. It ended up that Hubby owed about $20,000 worth of med bills but his "estate" was only worth $3,000. So the estate attorney then writes a letter to each creditor and states, "This is your claim; this is how much the estate was and this is how much we are going to pay you. You have 4 months to protest." Now, sometimes they do protest and they could sue you technically, but seriously, they won't. Hospitals have this stuff happen to them all the time because people die in them all the time. They take huge losses on their bills - that is one reason why medical bills are so high. They have to recoup those losses from the living. That is why credit card interest rates are so high - they have to pay for all the "deadbeats" (in the case of Hubby - literally DEAD beat...). That is why credit card debt is called "unsecured debt."

Please don't fool yourself that things will get better and thus you do not prepare financially for life without your alcoholic especially if that alcoholic is your spouse. Sadly, though there are all sorts of happy endings, you will know at some point whether yours is NOT going to be one of those happy endings. And then you must protect yourself. Yes - it is cold-hearted in some ways; yes - it is calculating in some ways; but remember, the alcoholic no longer cares about you (they simply cannot ... it is a symptom and effect of their illness); they only care about alcohol. YOU must care about you (and mitigate the financial fallout for any other survivors like your kids).

Grace and Peace.

And…yet another post about Robin Williams

Geez - there have been dozens and dozens of posts about Robin Williams today. The most meaningful for me is this one by David Wong at one of my favorite humor sites.

Wong ends his article with this statement: "….this has nothing to do with life circumstances -- you were rich and accomplished and respected and beloved by friends and family, and in the end it meant jack fucking shit." This hit home for me because it was how I always felt about Hubby. Hubby had everything and he "blew it" with his alcoholism. However, I am doing Hubby a bit of a disservice here - Hubby suffered from depression which he attempted to "cure" with alcohol and it killed him.

Why do alcoholics and addicts become alcoholics and addicts? Many reasons I am sure. Some talk about having an "addictive personality". For some (Hubby is a great example of this), it may be sheer stubbornness; this belief that "I am an intelligent person and I DO NOT NEED ANY HELP with my depression - I can fix it myself!" Hubby would never go seek help; he felt that counseling was for "weak people" - not realizing that he was a "weak person" or perhaps knowing that he was and being ashamed of it. Perhaps I was partly responsible for this - I am a rather self-assured, almost outrageously capable person who, I am told, often awes and overwhelms people with my ability to face and overcome adversity (their words, not mine). Maybe Hubby was too ashamed to admit to ME that he needed help; maybe I am the type who did not invite such confessions of weakness. Maybe it is all my fault that he died.

Well, of course not really - we all make choices on how to cope with things and Hubby made his choice and I am not responsible for his choice though maybe I was a contributing factor to his choice. These are the thoughts that plague me still about his addiction and death. These are the thoughts that I imagine are running through the minds of Robin's friends and family. God help them and love them.

Williams' death has sparked this conversation among us even if only for a little while. I guess what I am saying is, there is a fine line between being kind and being an enabler. Many times those of us who live with alcoholics and addicts are so afraid of being enablers that we forget to be kind. But it is so darn hard, isn't it? Because alcoholics and addicts are such damn pains in the asses and they make our lives miserable. It is easy to say "Aw shucks - how awful" about a beloved celebrity like Williams. It is hard to say "Aw shucks - how awful" when you are comforting your child who has been cussed out by his drunken daddy for no reason whatsoever or when you are scrubbing and scrubbing that strange black goo that appears in the toilet every day that an alcoholic uses (what in the heck IS that goo? What in the heck was in Hubby's pee that caused that goo?! But I digress…) or when you are bailing your alcoholic out of jail.

Or when you can't sleep at night because your alcoholic is thrashing and crashing around the house because he can't sleep and is miserable and suddenly there is utter silence and you think, "Ah, at last he has settled down quietly and I can get some rest" (only to discover the next day that he sure did settle down… he fell down and died).

Be kind. Be aware of the contradictions in being kind and try to be ok with that. Because - yeah - your loved one may be the next one who had it all but it "meant jack fucking shit."

The Great Convergence of the Ill-Used Women

One of the people who kept me sane during the years of Hubby the Alcoholic and then continued to lift me out of my doldrums after his death and show me how to have fun is my roommate from college (I will call her "Roomie"). Roomie is a brilliant scholar, a college professor and dean, who really knows how to have fun. She is basically a small town southern gal at heart just like I am despite our highly-vaunted college degrees and jobs and such. This is what I love about her - she understands how I can get into both Stockhausen and AC/DC, art films and Transformers, classical and KISS. I love a fine wine but I love a cool 1960's Camaro with a hot engine at a bonfire on the lakeshore even more…. Roomie has been ill-used by men. This was constant during our time together in college and beyond. Her husband left her for a graduate student - left his beautiful, intelligent, big-hearted wife for a grad student…ah well…. I see Roomie a lot.

Now my second closest female friend is moving back into my town. I will call her "High School Besty". Brilliant vocalist, award-winning choir director got a job at a big high school near me. Also a small-town southern gal. Moving here this weekend. Besty has also been "ill-used". Was on the losing side of a divorce. So it goes. I plan on seeing Besty a lot.

And though I scarcely consider myself a "victim" I guess I must admit to being "ill-used". Because everyone who is manipulated by an alcoholic is ill-used. I know…you are only manipulated if you let yourself be manipulated, but it often takes awhile for us to figure it out! The alcoholic uses you (and your money and your kids and your life) all up until you figure it out either on your own or with the help of a support group or therapist.

I look forward to this gathering of ill-used women that I see happening soon in my future. Not so that we can sit around and moan and groan (none of us are moaners and groaners) but simply so that we can have some fun. We are talented, intelligent, healthy, good-looking women. By being so capable we became our worst enemies; the users were drawn to us because we could prop them up. We are smarter now. We can still have a good time and we deserve it. Cue the AC/DC...

That's all.

Two Years ago

Wow - two years ago you died ….

non omnis moriar