This is the second post I have written that is not about my wife. I got a call last night from my sister. Our mother is drinking herself to death. She has been an alcoholic for almost thirty years, since Dad cheated on her and she eventually divorced him. It broke Mom’s heart and she hauled herself way up to the North Country and has been alone and lonely and hurting ever since. My other sister followed her up there and made a life for herself. My mother has lived vicariously through my sister and her kids (and us too, at a distance, I guess) but she has had pretty much no friends her own age.
Now Mom is hitting the vodka pretty hard and seems to be on her way out. She isn’t taking care of herself or her little apartment or her little dog. She drinks herself into a coma by the afternoon and doesn’t eat much and doesn’t clean herself up. She often is incoherent and has trouble making a complete sentence or following a conversation. I know from talking to her on the phone when I call her to late in the afternoon, that she still obsesses about my father and her divorce, almost thirty years later. She can still get quite angry about it and will rant uncontrollably even now.
Her mother, whom I always felt a special connection to, was also a drunk and a Demerol addict although I didn’t know this until I was an adult. For years I thought she was a diabetic because that was the excuse she used when she shot up on a trip to Maine when I was little. She must have had the drinking pretty much under control when I was around, because as a kid I never saw it. But apparently it scarred my mother. Her stepfather sent her away to a boarding school for high school so she wouldn’t have to see her mother pass out in her plate at dinner any more. Now my mother is worse then that. And dying from it.
January 12, 2009 at 7:21 pm |
I’m really sorry that you have to deal with this on top of everything else. I don’t know what else to say other than you will be in my thoughts (as ever).
January 13, 2009 at 11:52 am |
Thanks a lot, I do appreciate your thoughts.
January 13, 2009 at 9:17 pm |
I’m really sorry to hear about your mother. My dad was an alcoholic (I never called him that growing up since he was functional, but he drank martinis every evening/night). But it affected my mother and her behavior since he did no more than go to work, come home, demand dinner, watch tv while drinking – same thing for years on end. He was generally irritable or overly sentimental all the time. I never thought years ago I would marry an alcoholic and would be in the same situation as my mom. I never though I would feel as bitter and cynical about someone I loved and probably still do love as she did with my dad.
January 14, 2009 at 11:18 am |
My father was a heavy drinker, probably an alcoholic, too. My mom didn’t really start drinking until they split up, before then she was a social drinker. My father died of a malignant brain tumor when he was fifty and I have to wonder if alcohol didn’t have something to do with it. My father was kind of a party animal, he was very social and a lot of fun at parties or when we went out. Nobody saw how mean he was to us kids or my mother when we were at home. And I know he saw it as just being strict, a way of getting us ready for the world. Probably thought he was doing his duty as a father. He didn’t show it much, and he used to piss me off a lot, but I never thought he didn’t love us in his own way. Or us him, either.
My siblings and I all grew up to be pretty heavy drinkers ourselves. I started at fourteen, and I think we all did, give or take. Since this stuff with my wife, I toned down my drinking a lot and by now have basically quit drinking at all. I love my mother and I love my wife, even though I am often very angry and bitter and cynical about their drinking and the things they say and do while drunk. It is funny, I always thought heavy drinking was just a normal part of life, part of having fun. Until the problem with my wife, I just accepted booze and its problems as normal. I never thought about being bitter and cynical towards someone I loved because it just never occurred to me that I would have to worry about that.