At the wake for Al Marley yesterday, Father Richard C. Messina gave a stirring description of what he thinks the afterlife might look like.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/ZADcJdFY-0w
He described how people get excited when a baby is on the way.
“The baby will be here soon!” friends and family will say. Then the baby arrives and the aunts, uncles, grandparents and family friends come to meet the little tyke. It’s the beginning of life.
That, Father Dick said, is what it must be like in Heaven. Everyone who went before you is up there saying, “Al is almost here! We’ll see him soon.” Then you die, and everyone up there excitedly comes to greet you.
“I have no doubt Sean was there to grab him by the arm and pull him to the other side,” Father Dick said.
I know he’s right. In the room in the funeral home where they show a slideshow of the deceased’s life, there were some pictures of Sean I hadn’t seen in a long time: Sean, with a jet-black mohawk, cutting his father’s hair, wedding photos, family trips to the beach in the 1970s and 1980s.
Buried in the slide deck was another picture I hadn’t seen in a long time. It’s my brother Michael and Al, sitting on a log. They appear to be doing something with a fishing line. Both have big smiles on their faces.
It’s been an emotional few days. I came to the edge of a relapse. A father figure died. Then there was the 9-11 anniversary. This stuff can burn a person down to nothing. But I don’t burn like I used to.
Mood music:
It’s funny how people react not only to their own adversity, but that of others. Some people become incapacitated with grief when a pet dies and some of us want to say, “Fuck, man. It’s a pet. Get over it and stop crying in front of everyone.” But that’s just us judging someone without all the facts.
When I come up against difficult things, I write about it. One now-former reader lamented that my blog is “soooo depressing” that she can’t read it anymore. That suits me fine, because she was the type that had all the answers and told you how you should live. She was an expert in everything, but she never really understood the purpose of this blog, which is to stare the horrors of life in the face, describe it honestly and deal with it. Life is full of depressing things, but when you can face those things head on, there’s a ton of joy and beauty on the other side. That’s my experience, so I try to share it without telling you what to do.
And that’s what this post is about. Dealing with adversity and learning to get over it.
Yeah, I came close to a relapse last week. I did what every addict does — I reached a point in my recovery where I got so comfortable and felt so in control that I started getting sloppy. It’s funny how this happens, because when we feel in control it usually means things are falling apart behind the scenes. In my case, my father having three strokes tired me out enough that I started forgetting to do the things a person in recovery is supposed to do.
I went to a 12-Step Big Book study last night and the chapter of the night was perfect for me. It was about people who relapse because they think they have their addiction licked. They have that one weak moment that sends them back down to hell.
Going to a meeting the night that chapter was on the table was a classic case of God trying to tell me something. That something goes like this: Life is full of the good and bad. Deal with it and get over it. And, above all, don’t binge over it.
I write this stuff down and share it because we all have moments where we need that kick in the ass. My ass stings pretty good right now, but I’m feeling very grateful for it.
When you become paralyzed by the hole in your soul, the thought of dealing with it is terrifying. But when you finally take that next step, it’s one of the best, natural highs out there.
Last week I started to deal with things. I told my wife about my sloppiness and decided to declare myself in breach of abstinence and sobriety. I decided to tear it down and start over.
Yesterday I left my sponsor a message telling him I was sorry for being such a lousy sponsee. Now we’ll see if he wants to stick with me or if I need to find someone else. At least I took that step.
This evening I’m going to go to the wake for a man I looked up to, and it will be with a sense of celebration, not sadness. He lived his life as we all should: To the full. He earned a ticket straight to Heaven, and that makes me happy. I’ll admit I’m a bit nervous about seeing his wife and daughter for the first time in many years. They haven’t been happy with me in that time and tonight probably won’t change things. I don’t want to be an uncomfortable presence. I’ll just do the best I can.
I have all the coffee I need and I packed three abstinent meals for the day. I guess you could say my pistol is fully loaded and I’m ready for what comes next.
I have a busy work day, and I couldn’t be happier about that. I do, after all, love what I do.
I have to deal with my feelings about ending the estrangement with my mother. This week, I’m going to talk to Erin and carve out an action plan.
If you see me twitching and talking to myself, don’t worry. I’m dealing with life and getting over things I can’t control or undo.
I write a lot about my friend Sean Marley in this blog because he helped shape the man I became and the struggles I face. Right now, I’m thinking of his dad, Albert J. Marley.
Mood music:
Al died a couple days ago. I got the word from one of the Marley cousins, who told me, “Al is with Sean now.” I’m sad, but more than anything else, I’m grateful — grateful that he was such a big part of my formative years.
This post is a tribute to Al. I practically grew up in his house and he treated me like one of his own.
My fondest memories with him involve the sea. We lived on Revere Beach, but he’s really the one who taught me to appreciate it. The Marley home was a cozy, loving place in the 1980s and early 1990s. I spent so much time there because it was a happier place than my own home two doors down. At least that’s how it felt to me at the time.
The Marley house was steeped in seaside decor, especially the sun porch. I loved that porch. In the summers I’d sit there sucked in as Al told me one story after another about his ocean experiences. He was a captain in the U. S. Coast Guard and a past commodore of the Pleasant Park Yacht Club in the neighboring town of Winthrop. He was an Army veteran. He loved to tell me stories about those days as he sat in his chair and chain smoked.
He always had a story. One day their Irish Setter Shannon was busted after finding and devouring a box of doughnuts. They found the box and a trail of powder that led under the kitchen table where the dog was hiding. This reminded Al of the time a previous Irish Setter they had tore into a roast beef on the counter while they were all at Mass.
Like any good Irish-American sailor-storyteller, he embellished every detail — how much he was looking forward to the roast beef as he sat in church, how they came home to find pieces of the roast all over the house and how the dog cowered under the kitchen table, just like Shannon did after demolishing the donuts.
Al was in his element on the water. He would take me and anyone else who wanted to go in his small boat on a tour of the outer Boston Harbor islands. And nothing made him prouder than when Sean took the wheel of the boat. Whenever Sean took the helm, Al would glow with pride and give his son a kiss on the cheek.
He meant the world to my brother, Michael, too. He gleefully taught Michael everything there was to know about the sea, fishing, and oceanic culture. He eventually got Michael a job at the Pleasant Park Yacht Club. He was devastated when Michael died.
After Sean’s death, I didn’t see the Marley family much. Everyone moved to different towns and moved on.
But the family will always hold a place deep in my heart. By now the reader knows how much Sean meant to me. Now you know how much Al meant to me, too.
—
MARLEY, Albert J. of Winthrop, and Ft. Meyers, FL, formerly of Point of Pines, Revere, passed away on September 8, 2011. He is the beloved husband of Barbara A. (Indresano) Marley. Son of the late Albert E. and Mary E. (McMackin) Marley. Devoted father of Grace (Marley) Cloutier and her husband Jeffrey of Freeport, ME, and the late Sean J. Marley. Cherished granddad, of Marley, Maxine, and Samantha Cloutier. Dear brother of Mary L. Andrews of Falmouth, MA, and the late Elizabeth Marley and Paul Marley. Also survived by many nieces and nephews. Funeral from the Maurice W. Kirby Funeral Home 210 Winthrop St. WINTHROP, on Tues, Sept 13, at 9am. A Funeral Mass will be held at St. John the Evangelist Church at 10am. Relatives and friends are invited. Interment will be private. Visiting hours are Mon. only 4-8pm. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the West Roxbury VA, c/o Voluntary Services, attn. Cardiac Unit, 1400 West Roxbury, MA, 02132, or to St. John the Evangelist Church 320 Winthrop St. Winthrop, MA, 02152. Albert was a retired Insurance Broker and the owner of A.J. Insurance Co. He was a graduate of Merrimack College, a U.S. Army Veteran and a Captain in the U. S. Coast Guard. He was also the Past Commodore of the Pleasant Park Yacht Club and a member of the Mass. Bay and Commodore’s Club of America. For guestbook and directions, go to www.mauricekirbyfh.com.
For those, like me, who struggle with suicide, particularly how the Catholic Church feels about it, I have something useful a good friend sent to me this afternoon, presumably after reading this morning’s post.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/jrRfoEEDENo
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“2282 Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.
2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.”
Thanks to my friend for sharing.
I think the language shows that the Church doesn’t see this issue in the black and white way we often think it does.
So if you know someone who died by their own hand and it tortures you to think about where in the afterlife they are, take comfort in knowing that they may not be in such a bad place after all.
And do something to honor them, like doing things to raise awareness about mental illness.
I’m praying hard for my co-worker and friend Joan Ritchie Goodchild and her husband Bryan. Bryan’s uncle and cousin were swept away in the flash flooding Tropical Storm Irene caused in Vermont Sunday.
The body of Rutland Water Treatment Plant Supervisor Michael Garofano, 55, was found Monday near the raging brook feeding the Rutland city reservoir he and his 24-year-old son, Mike, went to check Sunday afternoon.
The younger Garofano is missing and “feared dead,” state emergency management officials said. A search was under way for his body.
As Joan said on her Facebook page yesterday: “The whim of fate can be incomprehensibly cruel and unfair.”
There’s not much I can say about this other than that I’m sad and my heart aches for Joan and her family.
I’m going to keep praying for them and I ask that you do the same.
I’ll end with a couple random thoughts:
–First, this quote from Mister Rogers rings true, and, understanding his words as I do, I know this family will pull through:
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers–so many caring people in this world.
Some people get depressed on their birthday. Not me. The fact that I turn 41 today is a freak of nature. But a year into my forties, I know I have more cleaning up to do.
Mood music:
Item: When I was sick with the Crohn’s Disease as a kid, I lost a lot of blood and developed several side ailments. I’m told by my parents that the doctor’s were going to remove the colon more than once. It didn’t happen. They tell me I was closing in on death more than once. I doubt it was ever that serious. Either way, here I am.
Item: When the OCD was burning out of control, I often felt I’d die young. I was never suicidal, but I had a fatalistic view of things. I just assumed I wasn’t long for this world and I didn’t care. I certainly did a lot to slowly help the dying process along. That’s what addicts do. We feed the addiction compulsively knowing full well what the consequences will be.
When I was a prisoner to fear and anxiety, I really didn’t want to live long. I isolated myself. Fortunately, I never had the guts to do anything about it. And like I said, suicide was never an option.
I spent much of my 30s on the couch with a shattered back, and escaped with the TV. I was breathing, but I was also as good as dead some of the time.
I’ve watched others go before me at a young age. Michael. Sean. Even Peter. Lose the young people in your life often enough and you’ll start assuming you’re next.
When you live for yourself and don’t put faith in God, you’re not really living. When it’s all about you, there no room to let all the other life in. So the soul shrivels and hardens. I’ve been there.
I also had a strange fear of current events and was convinced at one point that the world would burn in a nuclear holocaust before I hit 30. That hasn’t happened yet.
So here I am at 41, and it’s almost comical that I’m still here.
I’m more grateful than you could imagine for the turn of events my life has taken in the last six years.
I notice them now, and I am Blessed far beyond what I probably deserve.
I have a career that I love.
I have the best wife on Earth and two boys that teach me something new every day.
I have many, many friends who have helped me along in more ways than they’ll ever know.
I have my 12-Step program and I’m not giving in to the worst of my addictions.
Most importantly, I have God in my life. When you put your faith in Him, there’s a lot less to be afraid of. Aging is one of the first things you stop worrying about.
So here I am at 41. feeling a lot better about myself than I did at 31. In fact, 31 was one of the low points.
But I’d be in denial if I told you everything was perfect beyond perfect. I wouldn’t tell you that anyway, because I’ve always thought that perfection was a bullshit concept. That makes it all the more ironic and comical that OCD would be the life-long thorn in my side.
I just recently quit smoking, and I’m still missing the hell out of that vice. I haven’t gone on a food binge in nearly three years, but there are still days where I’m not sure I’ve made the best choices; those days where my skin feels just a little too loose and flabby.
I still go to my meetings, but there are many days where I’d rather do anything but go to a meeting. I go because I have to, but I don’t always want to.
And while I have God in my life, I still manage to be an asshole to Him a lot of the time.
At 41, I’m still very much the work in progress. The scars are merely the scaffolding and newly inserted steel beams propping me up.
I don’t know what comes next, but I have much less fear about the unknown.
I’ve always had this stupid idea that I needed to be everyone’s friend. Even when I was bullying someone, I’d turn around and try to be their friend. I always wanted everyone in my family to like me, even when I was busy hating them.
I’ve carried that into adulthood and got obsessed about it with things like Facebook. This morning I glanced at my friend count and it was 1,713. I could have sworn it was 1,715 a few days ago. So I started looking around to see who might have gotten mad at me. I noticed that three relatives had disconnected from me. A year ago that would have bothered me a lot more than it did this morning.
“At least my ‘friends’ seem to be sticking around,” I thought to myself.
Sarcasm aside, I do think I’m turning a corner with this whole like-dislike thing. Slowly, it’s sinking in that I need to do a better job at listening to my own words. At the beginning of this blog is a post called “Being a People Pleaser is Dumb.” I wrote about how I wanted to be the golden boy at work more than anything back in the day, until I realized it was absolutely impossible to please everyone all the time. In fact, some people are unworthy of the effort.
I’ve had to learn that lesson all over again in the social networking world.
When people walk away from me online, I figure it’s because they don’t particularly enjoy this blog. So be it.
You can’t be everyone’s friend. You shouldn’t be everyone’s friend.
I’m slowly warming to the idea that if some people don’t like you it’s because you have the stones to take a stand on the things you believe in.
You either like me or you don’t. It’s all good.
I’m connected to a lot of people I’m not particularly fond of these days. It’s nothing personal. I just find find the whiny, woe-is-me status updates grating. Facebook is full of that stuff, along with all the self-righteous, pre-manufactured statements people wrap their arms around.
But it’s your profile.
Do what you want with it, and I’ll do what I want with mine.
Readers have been sending me all kinds of articles lately about where addiction and mental illness come from and how best to recover. It’s useful and appreciated. But there’s a missing piece. A big missing piece.
Mood music:
Here’s the thing about addicts: We know all the things you’re supposed to do to get well. We know full well what is good for us and what is bad.
And when the itch takes over our brain, all that stuff doesn’t matter. We want the thing that’ll make us comfortable. In that mode, we avoid all the good stuff at all costs.
Yoga is fantastic for you and helps you learn to live in the moment. But when my head is in that other zone, there’s just no way I’m going to try it. A big fat cigar is what I REALLY want. (I just quit tobacco, which is why I’m prickly as I write this).
Fruit and veggies are terrific for you. But when the binge eater wants to binge, only the bad stuff will do. Forty dollars of McDonalds. That’s what I go for.
These are the things people just don’t understand when they try to help people like us with advice. When the addictive impulse strikes, the overriding craving is for something that’s very bad for us. Sure, gluten is bad for you. But if my binge-eating compulsion were active and I had gluten intolerance, I’d swallow all of it anyway.
Because I want that momentary feeling of rapture more than anything, regardless of the pain I know will come minutes and hours later.
That, my friends, is what escapes you when you’re trying to help me.
Now, let’s stop here for a reality check: I AM NOT going on a binge right now. I’ve been clean of that for more than two years now. Fundamentally, I am doing well. I’m going to my 12-Step meetings. I’m writing. True, I am edgy right now because I quit smoking cold turkey Friday night. But that will pass. I’m holding steady on that front, despite the constant twitching.
But I am feeling vulnerable. My disease is doing push ups in the parking lot and it’s just dying to kick my ass.
I’ve written much about how my addictive behavior is a byproduct of mental illness (OCD). But addiction itself IS the mental illness. My friend Alan Shimel sent me an article from the AP that states the case pretty well:
Addiction isn’t just about willpower. It’s a chronic brain disease, says a new definition aimed at helping families and their doctors better understand the challenges of treating it.
“Addiction is about a lot more than people behaving badly,” says Dr. Michael M. Miller of the American Society for Addiction Medicine.
That’s true whether it involves drugs and alcohol or gambling and compulsive eating, the doctors group said Monday. And like other chronic conditions such as heart disease or diabetes, treating addiction and preventing relapse is a long-term endeavor, the specialists concluded.
Addiction generally is described by its behavioral symptoms — the highs, the cravings, and the things people will do to achieve one and avoid the other. The new definition doesn’t disagree with the standard guide for diagnosis based on those symptoms.
But two decades of neuroscience have uncovered how addiction hijacks different parts of the brain, to explain what prompts those behaviors and why they can be so hard to overcome. The society’s policy statement, published on its website, isn’t a new direction as much as part of an effort to translate those findings to primary care doctors and the general public.
“The behavioral problem is a result of brain dysfunction,” agrees Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
That’s some very enlightening stuff, and it will be helpful to people going forward. But THE answer to the problem will remain elusive.
I get a lot of dietary advice lately. People read about how I don’t eat flour or sugar as part of my recovery from binge eating. And that leads to questions like this: “Have you tried a gluten-free diet?”
It’s a fair question, and the person who asked about it just wants me to be well. I suppose a diet devoid of flour and sugar is gluten free. Mostly gluten free, anyway.
But in the end, the gluten itself was not my problem. The problem was my overwhelming instinct to eat all the gluten.
The problem is about control. I have none. The sensor in the brain that tells people when they’ve had enough doesn’t work in my head. It broke long ago. So I need a set of coping tools and the 12 Steps to keep my head in the game.
That’s not THE answer, either. But it helps a lot.
Thanks for sending me the articles, friends. I might balk at some of the information, but I appreciate the spirit in which it’s delivered.
You’ve heard the sorry old tale of the addict who cleaned up from the addiction that made his life unmanageable, only to pick up three more vices. That’s me. Take the surprise Erin got when opening my work bag.
Mood music:
She was cleaning and found earphones that belonged to me. She unzipped a front compartment in my laptop bag to put them away and had the unpleasant shock of discovering where I’d been hiding all my smoking products.
Everyone knows I like cigars. What people don’t know — and what Erin discovered — is that I’ve been sneaking cigarettes, too. Two packs were hidden in the pocket.
She took it better than I expected. I probably deserved a far harsher reaction. But she knows how addictions make someone like me tick. Instead, she talked me through the things I might be able to do to replace this crutch.
I agreed to stop smoking immediately — the cigarettes and cigars. And you know what? I’m pissed off right now. Not at Erin, but at my lot in life. I can’t seem to do anything in moderation, and so I have to put everything down.
I resent not being able to have vices. It makes me want to put my fist through a wall.
It’s nobody’s fault. It’s simply a problem with how my brain ticks. This is just the latest in a big shift I resolved to take three years ago when my binge eating compulsion brought me to my knees.
When you give up your worst addiction, you go looking for crutches to help you through. In the first year of not binge eating, I used alcohol as a crutch. Then I put that down, too. I picked up cigars, and, more recently, cigarettes.
If you think that’s pathetic, that’s because it is.
As I write this, I’m on day three without my smokes. I’m pretty fucking irritable. Nicotine cravings have nothing to do with it.
Like I said, I resent having to give up all my vices.
Coffee is all that’s left.
If you think I’m giving that up, you’re out of your fucking mind.
