Dealing with Death
Everyone has to deal with death, whether you're in recovery or not. Loved one's die, and everyone must face the grieving process. It is never pleasant, and it's something that you never get used to.
The death of a loved one can also be used by our addictions to lead us to act out in response to the resulting pain. But using in response to a death is simply an "excuse" to use. It is never a "reason" to use, because it won't bring them back. It won't make anything in your life better; but it will make everything a lot worse. Though we want to use to make the feelings go away, using will only, at best, put them off for a moment. Then our grieving process will immediately return, and we will have to deal with the additional pain of knowing that we have relapsed. Then we use to get rid of those feelings, and we become enmeshed in the cycle of addiction once again.
And if our loved ones were still alive, they wouldn't want us to use, anyway.
The stages of grief are predictable, but it always seems that those stages feel different somehow each time. When someone close to me dies, I read an excellent little book called “Good Grief”, by Granger E. Westberg. It’s an inexpensive, pocket sized book, but it’s worth a million bucks. Below are the ten stages of grief, as per Mr. Westberg...
1 - We are in a state of shock
2 - We express emotion
3 - We feel depressed and very lonely
4 - We may experience physical symptoms of distress.
5 - We may become panicky
6 - We feel a sense of guilt about the loss
7 - We are filled with anger and resentment
8 - We resist returning
9 - Gradually hope comes through
10- We struggle to affirm reality
I have found in my own experience that I usually hit all of these stages, though not always in the above order.
If you remain in recovery for any length of time, you will repeatedly bury your old using and drinking buddies. They will die of heart attacks, liver failure, suicide, auto accidents, gunshot wounds, or any of the other "final symptoms" of our disease. I have found that I always feel a sense of guilt when this happens to me; and it has, many times.
In 1996, my best friend died a classic alcoholic death. He accidentally cut his toe, and didn’t go to the doctor. He watched as it got infected, turned into gangrene, traveled up his leg, and killed him. His death certificate said that he died of gangrene, but he really died of alcoholism. I know exactly why he did what he did. He was where I was, when I entered treatment. Tired of living the life of an addict and an alcoholic. Tired of the endless pursuit of the buzz, which no longer satisfied. Feeling trapped in my own skin, and wanting desperately to get out. Seeing suicide as a preferable option, rather than a desperate act.
His death caused severe guilt to arise in me. When I joined Narcotics Anonymous, I had to change people, places, and things. He was one of those people. I had to tell him that I could no longer hang out with him, which hurt very badly, and was a major test in determining if my recovery was the number one priority in my life. I proved to myself that it was, by leaving him to his own addiction. When he died, I felt that, “If only I had stayed with him, I may have been able to help him”. But the fact of the matter was, if I had stayed with him, I would have died four years before he did. My addiction was trying use that unearned guilt to convince me, “You’re a piece of shit, and you don’t deserve to live anyway. You might as well get high!”. Thank God, I didn’t listen to it.
Without a doubt, the worse death that I have faced was that of my sister. When I was 28, in 1984, she died of cancer at age 30. I was shocked when it started happening. I had never dealt with anything like that before. I was terrified, and couldn’t face her. She died, and I didn’t tell her I loved her first, in spite of seeing her several times before it happened.
I never dealt with her death, and buried those feelings with a constant supply of drugs. I never faced those feelings until I was in treatment. When the drugs wore off and I could no longer escape my true feelings, I found that her death was the major event in my life that I had suppressed. I cried for days, mourning her death seven years after it happened, as if she had just died. And, without a doubt, the most painful part of the whole experience was facing the fact that I didn’t tell her that I loved her before she died. The guilt that I felt because of my inaction was indescribable.
I learned that I had to forgive myself for my inaction, but that was no easy task. My sister was dead, and there was no way that I could tell her that I was sorry I had hurt her. I did not feel that I deserved forgiveness, which made the task seem impossible. But it really was impossible to go back and undo the things that had happened. They were a part of my past, none of which I could change.
This dilemma was the first one that I ever applied the Serenity Prayer to. I didn’t know what to do. I felt trapped, with no where to turn. I refused to run to drugs to hide from the feelings, as I had always done, so I had nothing to lose by trying something new. In response to this very humbling experience, I prayed...
God, grant me the Serenity,
to Accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to Change the things I can;
and the Wisdom to know the difference.
I couldn’t change the fact that my sister had died, and I couldn’t change the fact that I had not been there for her. So I had no alternative but to accept those facts. I had to find what I could change about the situation.
I could change my status with God on the issue. I prayed, and asked Him to forgive me, and to give me the strength to forgive myself. And I prayed for guidance and knowledge of how to forgive myself, which, prior to treatment, was a totally foreign concept to me.
I could change my behavior. My drug addiction had caused my sister a lot of pain during her lifetime, and she desperately wanted me to stop using. My commitment to the Program of Narcotics Anonymous couldn’t have pleased her any more, if she had been alive. I could think of no better way to make amends to her than to do my best to stay clean, so I could be there for the rest of our family for the rest of our lives.
Another thing that I could not get around was the “time factor”. Grief cannot be wished away nor thought away, nor “awayed” by any force; without the proper application of time. It takes the time it takes, for the pain to lessen to tolerable levels. And it takes even more time until we can accept the death of a loved one. The only way that I have been able to speed up the grieving process is to accept it, and not deny it’s existence and run from it.
I learned a very valuable lesson from the experience of my sister’s death. I learned how to tell how much I love someone. I learned that the amount of love that I have for someone is directly proportional to the amount of pain I will feel when they are taken from me. When I suspect that I am beginning to love someone, I meditate on what it would be like if they moved away, never to return. If the thought of that hurts very intensely, I know that I have come to love that person.
My reaction to seeing her dying also had an unusual effect on me, one that has scarred me for life. Once I learn by the above test that I really do love someone, I HAVE TO TELL THEM. I am afraid that someone will go away before I tell them I love them, as happened with my sister. I never want to face that pain and guilt again, even if it means that people think I’m weird when I tell them that I love them very early in a relationship. I don’t want to take the chance again, so as soon as I know that I love someone, I tell them. It’s something that I need to do, in an ongoing effort to keep my serenity, and my recovery, in tact. Whatever it takes, I'm willing...
