Imagine 12 years of sobriety shared with your wife, and then on a fateful birthday it all goes very badly awry. I am sitting listening to a story unfold that not only captures my rapt attention, but also is so powerful that it’s hard to hear it.  The old man in front of me is calm and reflective, and I can tell he has become adept at holding back the tears of this story but even so, his measured tone of delivery and pause between words, are all that is stopping a full rupture and cascade of grief and sadness…he is at these moments so incredibly fragile and vulnerable.  He tells me that his youth was full of alcohol and drug abuse, and lists off all kinds on substances using the slang of that generation…some drugs I recognize but most I do not.  He tells me about the violence he perpetrated against friends, family and strangers…and then how he and his wife decide to quit ‘cold turkey’ one day following a particularly violent episode.  The old man stirs in his seat a little and observes that the next 12 years were the best of his life and that he and his wife were “so happy”…he says this twice, the second time with even more tethered emotion.  He looks hard into my eyes…measuring something…and then looks away and tells me how on her 38th birthday they go out for dinner and she insists they share a bottle of wine…just a couple glasses of wine to celebrate she proposes and he accepts.  The last thing he remembers of that evening, the thing that is etched in his mind and has never left his palate…is the sweet taste of the first sip of that glass of wine.

He awakes the next morning in the ‘drunk tank’, and in his recovering  state asks the guard when he’ll be able to leave…the guard responds that he probably will never see the light of day again.  “What do you mean?” he asks, but there is no response.  A few hours later two detectives arrive, cuff his ankles and wrists, and escort him back to his apartment.  They enter and the grim scene is slowly revealed to him…blood soaked carpets and walls, and there right before him his naked wife uncovered and undignified.  He collapsed and wept, and tried to go to her but the detectives pulled him back…he struggled and pleaded but they took him away.  It was the last time he would see his wife…he would not be permitted to go to her funeral…and it would become be a scene that haunts his dreams almost every night.  During his trial for his wife’s murder, it would be discovered that at her time of death he was in fact already in police custody, having been detained for trying to rob a gas station some 11 km’s from their home – it was basically impossible for him to have committed his wife’s murder – still he would spend 32 months in jail for the robbery and to this day has no memory of these 12 hours that changed his life forever.  The old man looks up finally and says, “It doesn’t matter…I still killed her…not being there.  I guess in many ways we killed each other…taking that first drink.”  That’s how fast your life can change he laments; this year will be another 25 years of sobriety he tells me.  Every day, he says, I think about having a drink…and every day I remember the last time I saw my wife.  His voice trails off…he stands and shakes my hand…not needing to complete the narrative.  As we part company, I ask his wife’s name. “Hardly anyone ever asks me that” he stops.  He tells me her name, smiles a soft sad smile and leaves.

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Lawrence Lewis

“Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.”  – H. G. Wells

About Lawrence Lewis

I do a number of things professionally...but most of all and the true purpose of what I do through "my work" is to provide for my family, be a good husband and great father, and try to make a difference as a world citizen...I guess it's not much more complicated than that 🙂