Day 82 Bob

Bob is dying.  He’s having too many brain bleeds to survive the liver transplant.  He needs the liver to stop the bleeding but because of the bleeding they are refusing to offer him a lifesaving transplant.  I’m sorry Bob.  I’m really sorry for Kathy, his wife who has been his super hero through all of his medical tragedies.  She’s been by his side for every visit in the hospital whether they were together or not.  She has cried herself to sleep many nights over the prospect of losing the man she loves.  This is my example of unconditional love that I’ve been talking about.

Bob and Kathy took me in to their home one day when I had nowhere to go.  I had just left my marriage and didn’t know what to do at that exact moment.  I decided to go over to Dennis’ as he was my best friend and he might offer a suggestion.  He wasn’t home and I sat on the bench on his front porch with my thoughts and not much else.  Bob showed up looking for Dennis and I had never really met him before although I knew who he was.  He told me to follow him over to his house so I did.  I met Kathy and within minutes they insisted I get my stuff and move in their house until I could figure out what was next.  No money, no history, just come on in.  I’ll always be grateful for that kind act of friendship.  But that was how Kathy was.  And Bob too.  So I got my stuff and moved in that afternoon almost like it was the plan all along.

They knew the circumstances and that it would be a turbulent time for me with the reasons for my move.   But Bob felt that because I was in the program and through the steps and fellowship I would be manageable.  He almost had it right.  I didn’t know I had a different agenda.  I didn’t know about the depression that would swallow me and what the insanity of a drink named Nicole would do to me.  I tried to be human, I tried to recover from that seemingly insane state of mind.  I asked Bob to be my sponsor to insure my time would be well spent.  He warned me of asking a friend for sponsorship as there may be things said that would be hard to swallow.  I plowed ahead thinking nothing more could be worse than what I had already and had been going through.  Oh how wrong that proved to be.

Because of Bob’s illness there was a group of friends that rallied around him and Kathy.  If a liver became available, everyone would mobilize to do their part in helping in whatever way Kathy might need help.  It was an admirable and noble effort on the part of these friends.  Some of these people I had known for 20+ years from when I first entered AA.  They were not strangers to me.  I felt good catching up with old friends and felt part of a different fellowship for a short period.  They named themselves “Team Bob”.  I’m sure it was a great comfort to Kathy to know what support she had in helping take care of the man she so loved.  As a roommate I ran into Kathy more than once in the kitchen during a midnight raid on the refrigerator and would listen to her cry softly and sadly about her diminished future with Bob.  It was hard to come up with words of comfort as I had never been in the situation she was in.  I assured her that Bob’s contentment was due to her unencumbered care and that that was such a rare commodity in any relationship.  I mostly just listened to her.

I stayed with them for 3 months until I found a house to buy.  They suggested to me many times that I needn’t hurry into any purchases and that I could stay as long as I needed to.  But I had to follow my own credo and had to have my own house.  In retrospect I should have listened but that’s another story.  I worked the steps with Bob and spent a good amount of time on them.  I battled a wicked fight with depression that was on a scale of volcanoes and earthquakes.  I wanted to believe I was fighting back with the steps but in the end it was fighting a fire with an eyedropper.  I think I wanted to live on my own so I could just fall apart with no witnesses.  But I tried, I tried to stick with the humans, Team Bob, Kathy and whomever would tolerate me.  I didn’t know how loved I was or could be I was that inflicted with sadness over my place in life. 

I don’t remember when I first tried to take my own life.  I know I was in my own home so it was in 2005.  It involved a lot of pills and I got high as a kite and someone called 911.  I drank charcoal in the ER and was immediately 5150’d (involuntary 72 hour hold) to a local psych hospital.  My memory is a complete haze so I don’t remember who called and any other circumstance of that night.  I just remember waking up the next day in a room with a roommate and not able to go home when I was ready.  I saw a psychiatrist who announced that he had diagnosed me bipolar and I would be staying a few days to adjust to a medicine regimen that he was introducing to me involuntarily too.  So on top of my life being dismantled by the separation now I had to deal with the blow of being mentally ill.  At 48.  My midlife crisis didn’t involve buying a Harley, it involved something much more personal.  It didn’t do much to help with my attitude that everything would work out.  No, not even the steps were going to help this.  I felt the break inside of my head this time.  I knew there was no turning back that day.  I waited my whole life of trying to figure out how to live it with no fear and this was my reward.  I just broke.

I did go home and tried to resume living the best that I can with this horrible twisted feeling inside as a new rider.  I continued to work with Bob on the steps but I had this feeling it was all an exercise in a silly game that didn’t really matter.  I didn’t stop with the attempts.  It got worse and the results were always the same, 5150 and longer stays in the hospital.  It created more distance between me and my friends as I felt more and more apart from everybody.  Bob did his best to hang in there with me but the day came when I was high on pills and driving him home.  We pulled into the driveway and he was understandably upset.  He told me emphatically that our sponsorship period was over.  I had completed the steps but our relationship was done due to my behavior.  I was a bad boy once again and my consequence was losing my friend.  However it didn’t stop at Bob though.  Team Bob also balked at my friendship because now it was awkward to invite both of us to the same occasion so I would get bumped off the list.  Dennis’ brother was dying and he too had to let me go as my craziness was too much for him.  In the course of a few days all of my social contacts, other than work, had ditched me.  My sister didn’t talk to me because she thought I was just trying to get attention with my antics.  Wow.  I was actually doing the best I could with the damaged mind that I had and I lost everybody.  But it was Bob that ignited the fuse that blew me out of the social order.

In time, a lot of time I did find a sense of myself and mental order in my brain.  It took years and a lot of work but I did do some amazing development on myself.  I found other friends and Dennis came back into my life for a while.  I managed to hang out with Bob a few times but it was never the same.  I didn’t feel the same awe or sense of friendship that I initially had for him.  I tried but I saw him in a different light and I realized that I didn’t really care for the type of person that he was.  If I brought a woman with me he would ask her such inappropriate questions for some perverse reason.  I’m sure he thought he was being open minded but I didn’t appreciate it and I felt uncomfortable for my girlfriend.  I asked for his help with my writing once and he was eager and genuine in helping me.  But it wasn’t something that sustained me or wanted me to continue seeing him voluntarily.

Now he’s dying and probably won’t see the summer come around it’s that serious.  I feel horrible that a friend is dying but I feel like I don’t feel the horror or the impact of a friend dying.  I feel more for Kathy and for the loss she will suffer when he is gone.  I feel more for Dennis as he is sick to death about Bob.  And I wonder how that makes me feel that I don’t perceive it as a tragic loss.  Am I that selfish that I didn’t get over the huge slight of Bob pulling the trigger on our friendship?  It is fucking with me and I want a resolution.  It’s always a detriment to lose somebody in the sphere of friendship and I know in the end I will suffer my own bereavement due to the initial kindness that Bob shared with me.  In the years since he never acknowledged the pain that I endured over losing all of my friends.  Maybe I felt a word of apology would have gone a long way towards healing the scars that still remain today.  Maybe I am still too much of a kid to get over an ass kicking of momentous dimensions and that is something I can work with.  So I’m sorry that you’re dying Bob and I’m sorry that you’re suffering so with your disease.  I don’t wish that pain on anybody and I know your absence will create a vacuum for so many people that love you.  Thank you for the help and service you did provide and know that I won’t forget that.

1.       I’m grateful that I have a liver that is strong and healthy.

2.       I’m grateful for the beautiful friends I have in my life today.

3.       I’m grateful that I’m willing to share my feelings no matter how they make me sound.

 

 

 

 

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