Recovery Works!

My life, pre-recovery, was an on again-off again nightmare. Everything was the end of the world. Someone always intervened in my frequent attempts at suicide, ticking me off no end. I was wracked with insomnia, chain smoked, cried too much, craved sex on a regular basis, hence the parade of men that came and went in my life. I spent a lot of time trying to hide my torment and despair from my children and my friends. Most of them were not fooled. Then in my mid-forties I met and married my third abuser and soon began my spiral into hell. My bottom had come.

For five years I worked a rigorous and honest program called Repair, one that I had devised myself in bits and pieces, starts and stops, good ideas and failed ones. I spent time in a women’s shelter. I could write a book about the people I met there and what we all were going through. Finally I triumphed, got rid of my abuser, did some post recovery work and became the happiest person I know. My motto was, “If I’d known my life was going to turn out so good I would have started it sooner”.

But life is never perfect and there are always more lessons to learn, more sadness to be felt and a mire of challenges to wade through. I knew that going in and used the lessons I learned in Repair on a daily basis.

I would need them as 2015 has so far been the toughest year my husband and I have had.

Jim, one of Tom’s closest friends, was a man who had worked with him for decades, had gone motorcycle riding with him, camping with him and swapped information about guns, motorcycles and talked all of the man’s world lingo. They had both worked in Colorado together for AT&T and when Jim retired he moved down to Cornville, AZ where we lived so we could be nearby. In early March we found out that he had Pulmonary Fibrosis, Emphysema and COPD. The hospital told us he would need to have hospice care. He chose home hospice. Jim was an only child, who had never married, never had kids and already lost both his parents. Tom and I were his only family. We were told he had less than six months to live. It hit us hard. His only request was that we not go anywhere till after the end. It meant we couldn’t go to California for the four times a year wwe were used to. Tom was over at Jim’s two or three times a week doing errands and helping Jim out as best he could. I cooked dinner periodically and brought it over while the three of us ate and watched a movie.

On March 11th we lost Guinevere, our beloved Golden Retriever. For ten years she slept with us, took her morning walk with me, ate dinner with us, sat on the sofa and watched TV with us and lay on the bed each day watching me do my exercises. I went to her when I needed to work something out. She was always an attentive listener, her sad eyes nodding compassion as I rambled on. It was as if we lost a child. One day she was fine and the next in a few hours she was deadfrom heart cancer. Our grief was almost impossible to overcome. We buried her under the pine trees, one of her favorite spots. Tom built a cross and we hung Guinevere’s Harley Davidson collar over it. He moved a bench in front of the grave so we could visit her frequently. For weeks we wandered around in a painful daze, each of us trying to keep the other from finding out how hard it was to go on without her. She had been the center of our whole world. Our large family of four children, thirteen grandchildren and ten great-grand children all lived in the LA area so Guinevere had become our child, a substitute for the family we missed so much.

In May I had a total knee replacement. The recovery was longer and more painful than I had anticipated.

Jim died in Tom’s arms on July 27th while we tried to move him in his wheelchair to the bathroom. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. As Tom held on to him I prayed the 23rd Psalm. It gave us both strength. We moved through the shock of taking care of his estate, something Jim had told us little about. It has been an arduous and complicated task working blind as it were. Jim loved Guinevere and she loved him. A few days before she unexpectedly died we took her over to see Jim shortly after he had been told about the state of his health. As soon as Guinevere saw Jim she raced over and placed her front paws around his neck giving him hugs and kisses. We had never seen such an outpouring of love from Guinevere like this for Jim. They kept hugging each other for a long time. I told Jim later, after we had lost Guinevere, that I think she knew her time was coming and she wanted to say goodbye.

A couple weeks ago I found out that one of my oldest and dearest of friends was dying of cancer. It came as a great shock. One day I was laughing with her while talking to her when I called to wish her Happy Birthday and within days she called me with the news. She too is in California so I was able to see her when we went there a few days ago.

Today, my knee has healed and we are almost finished with the settlement of Jim’s estate. Cleaning out his house has taken us almost three months. We picture Jim and Guinevere together waiting for our time when we drop our bodies to be reunited. Our loss has never healed and probably never will.

I tell you these things because before I went into recovery if I had had such heavy loads I would have chain smoked, cried, got drunk, and anything else I could have thought of no matter how damaging it would be to my body. I could not have dealt with these unexpected blows. But because I went through recovery I understand that no one lives forever; am grateful that Guinevere went quickly with no pain after giving us ten years of joy and that Jim died how he wanted to with Tom and I near him.

I kept thinking, will this year never end? So much to bear in such a short time. There is little we can do about the blows that hit us. We all have suffered at one time or another with some sadness. But now I can weave my way through the grief, knowing it too shall pass. Today I am blessed with intestinal fortitude only because I crossed the Bridge of Recovery and today have the tools to work through any challenge life gives me. I am extremely grateful. If you are reading this and need help get a copy of Repair Your Life. It has a book page on our website. Get started so that if sadness should visit you, you’ll have the inner strength to deal with it. Good luck.

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