After The Work

She sat in the living room, smoking a cigarette, her little chihuahua sitting on her lap. Her hair was long, black and grey, straight as it was in the 80’s. She was thin, the years had worn hard on her, the reason now lay in hospice. Her husband was laying on his hospital bed, myself in a chair between them. The television was on, but there was no sound, just a constant companion to her loneliness as her husband lay dying. Honestly she had been alone for many years, like when he was gone on deployment, gone out with friends, when he was in the garage on his cars, and even that time he moved out into the shed.

She had asked him a thousand times to quit drinking, she told me. He knew that he should, he’d stop if he could, but then he’d come home with another pack of beer after a brief dry time. He was funny, charming, intelligent and sweet, until he drank and like a switch he became an arrogant, selfish, ”know-it-all”. He tried counseling, he tried, 12 steps, they tried an intervention, doctors warned him, friends warned him, she pleaded with him. He was her hero, looking so proud when he stepped off the ship in his Navy dress. On the boat he was dry, and when he was dry he excelled. He made friends, rose up the ranks, served with heroism when he was called. He fought foreign enemies for his country only to be felled by a domestic beer.

When I had met him a few months prior, I asked if he would stop drinking now that he was on hospice for liver failure. He couldn’t walk on his feet due to the swelling, his feet cherry red from gout. His abdomen was swelled and had to be drained every other week. It was painful to sit, painful to stand, painful to walk, painful to lay down. Beside his chair sat a case of 22 oz beers, the cheapest he could find. He could only drink one or two now to feel it as his body had gone from high tolerance to no tolerance. His skin was almost as yellow as his beer. He smiled at me after the question just said “nahh, no point in stopping now”. He could on hospice, no dietary restrictions after all. I said, “maybe you could give your wife six more months if you stopped now.” He looked down with a sad expression, and asked me to pray for him.

She and I discussed what life has been like together. “It was the best of times and the worst of times”, she replied. There were times they had so much fun together. He would lift her up in the San Diego surf when he was home on leave, laughing and kissing the day away. They had a child together, and early on he would toss their son in the air playfully in the living room. They would ride in his cars he would work on on the weekends, and find new restaurants to eat at on their road trips. The drinking was always a companion, but when he retired from the Navy early, its like he lost his purpose. His drinking increased, he stayed at the bar, worked on his car, and they grew apart. Then came the fighting once their son moved out, eventually he moved out to the shed where he could drink all he wanted. She would look out the back window at the light from the shed and wondered if it was her fault.

You could see it in her eyes, a lifetime of disappointment and pain. She said she had no affection for him, only disdain when she is really honest with herself. She honors him as her husband and decided to care for him until he passed, but the love had died years ago. She blamed him, blamed herself, and blamed that damned bottle. What a life they could have had, a bigger house without two cars half finished in the garage. The yard was unkempt, overwhelming for her now that she is older and cannot keep up with him and the yard. She had a quiet strength, purposeful dignity, as if she was honoring who he was and not what he had become.

What lessons can be gleaned from such pain? Faithfulness and love? I doubt she would agree, trapped more accurately described how she felt. Perhaps we can witness the horrors of alcoholism, the insidiousness of a disease that takes good men and women and warps them into selfish creatures that only mimic humanity. It is like they become robots who are only programed to consume and despair. The tragedy of the drink takes a heavy toll on those who love the drinker. It takes away joy, takes away intimacy, takes away futures, takes away health, and in the end, takes a way life. It is a double murderer, killing both the drinker and the soul of those they love.

We spoke for about an hour about life, memories, and her future when I looked over and saw he had stopped breathing. Perhaps he listened to us discuss her sad life, unable to do anything but listen. Perhaps something got though to him, now unspoken upon his lips. He left this world comfortably in his sleep. He wasn’t all bad, but bad took over him. His last days were not pleasant but he did not die alone. He was a veteran, a husband, a father, grandfather, and an an alcoholic. He was not one of the lucky ones who could put it down. Neither was she lucky because she loved him.