I had a new experience a few days ago. Nov 17, 2011, to be exact. On that day 67 years ago I entered this world, bawl’n, sqawl’n and give’n it hell. On Sept 9, 2011 I posted a story about some of my life with my children’s mother (From the frying pan into the fire).
On this day Nov 17, 2011 I was sitting here at my computer putzing around doing something, there was a knock on the door and there stood my son. I had not heard from him in quite some time and when I saw him with tears in his eyes, I thought he was going to tell me that his mothers dad (his Grandad) had passed away. He was the man that raised him and they were very, very close. But instead he said Mom passed away about 3:00 pm. He started to cry which does not happen in his world, not in public anyway! I put my arms around him and told him I was sorry for the loss of his mother. Today that was for real because of God Alcoholics Anonymous and a lot of friends. We visited for quite some time and when he left he was not quite so rattled.
Right after he left I began to feel something very odd going on inside me. I was feeling for my son and daughter’s loss, but then realized I was feeling a loss for myself as well. Even though we had been divorced for 40 plus years and I had no feelings of love for her, I was still feeling a loss. It scared the Hell right out of me, and I wanted to revert to my old ways of shoving it down inside me where nobody would know about it. Doing that would have created a secret that could have caused me to become very sick inside.
The way to keep this from happening was to talk to God and to another human being. Once shared it no longer has power over me. This would not have been possible without treatment, counseling and going to as many AA meetings as I go to. By doing the things that were just mentioned, I found out that this was quite common and I was just going through a process.
Thank God and my friends for being there as I went through my new experience.
