Heaven

There has been a lot of death this week in my AA circle.  No one I personally know, but folks have been, rightfully, bringing their grief and pain to meetings.  Two folks lost their lives to the disease.  Or at least that is one way to look at it. 

I am blessed to belong to a home group that a lot of people who work with alcoholics/addicts on a daily basis come to.  There are about 20 or so of us, intimate enough to really know each person.  Everyone can share, new people are noted/encouraged/sought out.  There is good long term, strong recovery.  These are folks working in rehabs and halfway houses.  They see a lot.

They are AA soldiers and look it.  Rugged, handsome faces.  Strong and healthy looking.  No bullshit types with eyes that can see to the soul and believe everyone is worth fighting for.  This week, they lost one.  A man who had been in and out overdosed against his bedroom door while his girlfriend pounded.  One of these men had talked to this addict the night he died.  Or perhaps I should say talked to his shell, I'm sure the man this addict really was was locked down tight.  I imagine a jailer swinging a hypodermic like a key.

My other regular meeting is much larger, there is a core of incredible everyday recovery.  Less of the front lines, and more of folks managing through life and all it brings.  It's an older crowd, and I love it.  They are scrambling less with career, family, disease.  They're not out there pushing anymore.  They're not asking "who am I, what do I want".  They know and they keep coming back to keep it and give it away.  The more transient portion of this large meeting are the folks like me, in their 30s and 40s.   We're still pushing, still moving too fast.*

One of these younger women shared that the first person she sponsored died this week.  She had fired this person as a sponsee two weeks before the sponsee died.  From what she said, I presumed the sponsee died in the throes of the disease.   I really like this woman.  I don't know her well, but I like the recovery she shares.  She was in anguish.

I don't cry, or at least, I didn't.  I'm very good at objective empathy.  But lately, my heart thaws.  I hurt for these people that died and those that cared about them.  In those rooms, for those hours, I ached for their loss.  Just pure feeling, not attached to a need for action.  Unheard of, noteworthy, a gift.

In my first sobriety, when I went through a loss of my own, someone in the program told me "people die and people leave, one way or another the relationship ends".  It so happened that the person I mourned had done both in quick succession.  I look at that comment now and cringe a bit at the harshness.  Yet at the time the thought comforted me.  If I could anticipate the outcome of any relationship I could manage my feelings.  

If I choose to fully give of my heart, knowing that a relationship will end, then I am fully participating in the relationship.  I make a decision that the joy of participating in the journey of the relationship will be worth the pain when it ends.  Or that could be crap.  Who knows?  If it speaks to you, use it.

In both cases of the people who died last week, there was a lot of talk about anger at the disease for beating this person, somber gratitude that it wasn't one of us in the rooms, a general sense that these two people dying was a waste.  I offer a reminder that it was simply their time.  If my god takes care of me, he (for lack of a better pronoun) takes care of everyone else too.  These two had suffered enough, it  was time to be free.  I imagine them, fully realized as the people they were underneath all the addiction shit, clear and shining.  

Viewing yourself from the Great Beyond has gotta be something like looking back at pictures of yourself in 7th grade from the safety of adulthood.  The ones with braces, a spiral perm, Ditto jeans, and blue eyeshadow.  I cannot conceive of anyone who would look back at seventh grade and say: "Those were the days, man, that was the best it ever got."  Yep, heaven is looking back at your life like one long-ass 7th grade year and saying to yourself, "What, in the name of sweet Jesus, was I thinking? G-Man-what were you up to with those Members Only jackets?"

*I read a great quote from Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Rhoda Janzen), that summed what I'm trying to get to here perfectly:

 "When you're young, faith is often a matter of rules.  What you should do and shouldn't do, that kind of thing.  But as you get older, you realize that faith is really a matter of relationship-with God, with the people around you, with the members of your community."