Tomorrow I will be sober 24 years. It was Dec 20st, 1986 that I took my last drink. My Mother died August 25th that year, one day after her 66th birthday. I almost witnessed the event. I had been at the hospital all night. At that time you were allowed to smoke in the rest areas and I had made a cup of tea and taken my cigarettes to the rest area with my tea, and in the few minutes that it took to have a cigarette she died. This formidable woman was gone. It had been quite a night. My Mother had been hosptilized for some weeks. She had blood clots. She had suffered from blood clots since about age 40. I recall her going to hospital many times, being hooked to an IV with Cumadin, then eventually coming home. Not this time. She was dying and she was dying that night, and I knew it, that is why I was at the hospital all night. If it hadn't been so awful it would have been funny. My Mother and I had the same Dr. This Dr lived just down the road from my mother. He was having a new house built, during the building of the house he had been renting a house almost next door to his new house. The day before my Mother died, the day of her birthday, he was moving into into his new house. For some reason he had the telephone in his rented house disconnected but the telephone company hadn't hooked up the telephone in his new mansion of a house. About 10:00p/m./ the night of the 24th my Mother began to experience a lot of pain as the clots moved from legs to her lungs. I let the nurses know of her pain and asked that she be given some morphine or demerol. They said they had to get her Drs permission to do this, so I suggested, rather strongly, that they get a hold of her Dr. and I didn't really care what time it was. That was when we found out that the Dr was not reachable by telephone because of what had happened with the hookup misunderstanding. My mothers pain got worse, and I got more angry. Around midnight I was finally so angry that I asked the nurse if another Dr in the hospital could authorize the morphine. This seemed to baffle the nurses. Finally I got really angry...totally pissed, and told the nurse that if she didn't have my Mother on morphine in 5 minutes I would drive my Drs new house and throw bricks, from the construction site, through every fucking window in his new house. That finally got their attention. Within a few minutes a Dr, I have no idea who, had administered morphine to my Mother. She was pain free and in some kind of morphine dream state. As I said I was in the rest area with a cigarette and some tea at somewhere about 3:30a.m. When I finished my tea and cigarette and went back to my mothers room and a nurse was coming out the door, she stopped me and said "Your Mother Is Dead" I had all kinds of feelings at that moment, the moment I knew that this formidable woman was dead. One of the feelings was anger, probably the predominant feeling was anger. I had been at this fucking hospital days and evenings for weeks, I had been there all night and she died when I was out of the room for 5 minutes. The nurses suggested that I spend a few minutes alone with my Mother. As I sat there beside her I remembered her asking me months, maybe a year ago, that if she ever got so she couldn't would I pull the hairs that were growing out of her face for her. She seemed to always have a pair of tweezers in hands and she was always pulling out hair that grew on her face. I remembered promising her that I would do that, and I hadn't. She was in discomfort most of the time and she seemed to have forgotten the hairs on the her face, All of a sudden I felt compelled to do as she had asked me. I found her cosmetic bag, (funny, I don't own a cosmetic bag) anyway I found it and I found the tweezers. I began to pull out the hairs, I could'nt seem to reach them all, so I straddled her body and pulled out more hairs with the tweezers. This is what I was doing when the nurse came back in. it must have looked like I was mutilatling my Mothers face. The nurse just stood there, then turned around and came back in with a little blue pill in a paper cup and paper cup of water, she handed me the pill and the paper cup and said "take this", then she helped me get off my Mother. She told me that the funeral home does all that.........Wow, I was talking about quitting drinking wasn't I? Didn't mean to talk my Mothers death tonight, but I have made a decision, I am never going to delete anything that I write in this blog. If it comes from my mind to my fingers and onto the screen it is going to stay there. Back to quitting drinking. I did not cry when my Mother died, I didn't cry at the funeral and I didn't cry for mionths after. Sometime in November the thought came to me "I know what will make you cry, a drink, or two or three will make/allow you to cry". I had been sober for over 5 years. I didn't drink for weeks after that. It was comforting to me know that I could cry and I would cry in time. In mid December it was time to cry. I bought a bottle of Walkers Special Old, I drank and I cried. The next weekend, the 19th and 20th of December I bought another bottle and I drank and I cried. I returned to a AA meeting on the 21 of December and I havn't drank or hardly cried since. So tomorrow, no today, it is after midnight, I am sober 24 years. I am also very tired right now.
December 21st, 2010..........12:14a.m.
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