Would
you like to play a game?
Back in the 80’s, or back in the day, there
was a little cultish breakout movie called War
Games. It brought Reaganism and the Cold War to the blizzard level.
Briefly, a geeky teenager hacks into the
Pentagon and, thinking he’s downloaded a harmless computer game, nearly starts
WWIII. Had this actually happened, of course, none of us would be sitting here.
Because there would have been no winners, just moral hubris.
So it is with the game I’ve played. There are
no winners in this game, not me, not my spouse. The only winner is the bottle. Regardless
of how you spin it or who it points to when it stops, the bottle always wins.
Now, let’s put it on a roulette wheel and divide it into possibilities, spin it
and see where the clicker stops. Ready? SPIN!
Clickclickclickclick.
Clickclick.
Click.
Stop.
It’s
your fault, you enabled, you allowed this to happen.
Really??? I tackled a 20+ year police
veteran, with a sidearm and pepper spray, brought him to the floor,
knee-chested him, forced his airway open, intubated him and poured liquor down his throat. I also didn’t stand in
front of his car, or take his keys, or his wallet, thus preventing him from
going to the liquor store. I also didn’t bar the front door when he walked in
with a couple of cases of beer and a few bottles of liquor. I also did not,
like Carrie Nation, take an axe to my ten thousand dollar kitchen cabinets in
an attempt to smash bottles and make a point. I know this because alcoholism is
a disease which any or all of the above cannot cure.
I don’t buy it.
Next spin.
You
didn’t spend enough time with him, so he sought comfort elsewhere.
I don’t have time to think about this one.
We each have a full time job. For years, his job required him to work ungodly shifts
consisting of long hours, usually in the form of monotonous, mindless duty (at
least to my Civilian understanding, but I’m usually wrong about these things),
punctuated by intervals of madness and once in a while, a sprinkling of sheer
terror. The months following 9/11 were a good example. I also worked. Outside
the home, inside the home, the huge yard where I cleared, planted and maintain
a rose garden, a vegetable garden, and a hosta garden and mowed a large lawn
once a week. Shopping, cooking, cleaning, maintenance, 2 special needs animals and trying to niche out some time for my
writing career. Workshops, book signings, conventions, meetings, retreats. If
someone where to make sleep a commodity on the stock market, I’d sink my last
discontinued penny into it. Perhaps it was sleep deprivation that blinded me. Too
busy to notice the extra bottles under the cupboard, to tired to see the
effects. Too empathetic to nag. Spin Again.
Double the points, double the agony. Two
sets of elderly parents, four of a kind. One set dying, one set chronically
ill. Spending what little time we had together up and down the 400 set of
highways and the Trans Canada speeding from crisis to crisis. Come home, mother needs you. Come home,
father is dying. Come home, mother is in the hospital. Come home, mother is
dying. Easier said than done. My spouse’s parents lived in New Brunswick.
We live an hour north of Toronto. My parents live east of Toronto. My spouse is
Catholic. And we all know, THERE’S NO GUILT LIKE CATHOLIC GUILT!
Late night long distance phone calls from
family members. I’ve been through all this from a very young age. I knew what
to expect. So-and-so is in the hospital and might not live until the ‘morrow. As
a child, I remember being roused out of bed in the middle of the night and
sleeping in the back seat of my dad’s car until we got to the destination of
crisis, usually Belleville. As I stated in my previous entry, I was born and
raised into a family of old people. Old people only get older. When they get
older, they become chronically ill. Chronic turns into terminal. Then you go to
a funeral. Mom dresses you in navy blue or black. You get to wear a hat and
gloves to church. At the funeral home they make you kiss the corpse. That’s
when the guilt lands on you and grows roots. Why didn’t they urge me to kiss
so-and-so when they were alive? Why not take me to visit more? I read sympathy
cards which included my name, but which I did not sign, and sprays of flowers I
didn’t know I picked out. Afterwards, you go to the Legion hall and eat
sandwiches. Really old people you’ve never seen before hug and kiss you and
praise your parents for having a child so well-behaved, “under the
circumstances.” Too bad so-and-so will
never live to see you grow up.
Guilt grows inside you. It becomes a
parasitic symbiant, and you, an oh-so-willing host. And so it was in the case of my
spouse, only multiplied by the number of miles between him and his family. What
I could never figure out was what, exactly, were we supposed to do at this end?
Oh, the hours wasted debating and agonizing over decisions and events we have
absolutely no control over. We are at least a 20 hour drive from New Brunswick.
Who do you call in the middle of the night at your place of work to inform that
you’ve been called home for a family crisis. How do you get a hold of a cat
sitter? What do you pack, how long do you think you’ll be gone? What about the
mail?
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I
cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
No truer words
were ever written. Because this is not a
game I can win alone, but at least I understand the rules.
Until next time…Amen.