PAYING ATTENTION

PAYING ATTENTION




There was a death in the family today. It was, as these things go rather sudden. And as it is in our group, always considered an undeserved and unwarranted blow to an otherwise deserving and rehabilitated person.

The meeting did not start out with any particular portent, it was a discussion I lead on the 12th step “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs”. In the “12 and 12”, the chapter is substantial and a discussion of it in any meeting seems a bit daunting since it can be taken in so many directions. We can talk about how we may have treated our families poorly in our trek to reach our spiritual goal. We can delve into the mysteries of having developed a “God sense” a real feeling for the presence of God in our lives, or conversely how we still struggle with the concept and worry if we have indeed achieved the rightness of the program as Bill W. had envisioned it.

We may even want to just maintain that we are just fine where we are. And regardless of where Bill W thought everyone should have been by this step, our spirituality was not predicated on a sense of the God of his, (Bill’s), understanding , but of our own, as was initially stated in the Big Book, written 14 years earlier. But we certainly could all agree that the calling of the twelfth step to help other alcoholics in need was a goal upon which we could all concur.

But I chose to step back and reconsider how little recognition I gave my family during my drinking days and specifically of the achievements of my daughter. That I had been disconnected enough during her high school years, and if not completely absent, certainly AWOL much of the time.

And whereas I was sober during most of her college years and even helped her with some of her college assignments, I did so as a dutiful father helps a “struggling” child, never really stopping to think just how much she actually needed me.

At her graduation I noticed that by her name in the program was a little cross that indicated that she had graduated with honors, magna cum laude in fact. Who knew? My wife didn’t. The daughter never let on. The wife expressed as much surprise as I did and when we drove back from the ceremony we were discussing, in some perplexed wonderment why and how we came to think that we should not once worry that she would have any difficulties in doing well at school. Parental genetic hubris was all that I could muster as an excuse.

But I was not going to let this stand silently as I had let all her past achievements. When she finally got home I told her at least three times how proud I was of her, and that although I had expected her to do well, it was equally gratifying to have seen her actually perform as well as my expectations.

Arthur Miller said it most poignantly, “Attention must be paid”! People must be recognized for their lives; no doubt for their accomplishments but certainly for their lives. And on this occasion, I was recognizing her for who she was, at this instant, through the lens of this honor to be sure, but also for the person she was and how proud that made me feel to be her father. And that needed to be said sooner rather than later and more often than not.

And for today and for now, that was what the essence of what the 12th Step meant to me for the meeting.

This topic seemed to strike a chord with the rest of the group because Al felt that he needed to tell his son (who was about ten years older than my daughter), now that I had brought up the subject, that maybe he had been too subtle in his “appreciation” of his son. Perhaps he needed to be more demonstrable and actually say it out loud and to say it directly.

“There can be no mistaking directly”, Al mused.

And as the theme jumped from one section of the group to the next, first this person then that took up the theme with similar eager remonstrations to either perform these duties or to renew these acknowledgements since it was a long time since these “attentions” had, indeed, been paid.

But Emma, whom I did not know, had died and a very upset Wendy announced it, barely getting the news out before breaking down into wails of tears. She had died rather suddenly, of a stroke, from a blood clot. And as I understand it she was about ten years my junior which certainly gave me pause.

Rather young by my estimation since I do not consider myself more than middle age. Twelve years sober. And Wendy wondering about the injustice of it all maybe, even, about the fairness of a God, that could wreak the havoc that was the life that Wendy had. How could she have deserved this?

Of course, there is no explanation. One’s faith in the goodness of people and the basic fairness that having lived a life worth living, does not protect you from the prior abuse of the body that God gave you (even the one that you believed so deeply in) and the ravages that time takes its toll on. It was not divine retribution, just a fact of her existence.

But she did have 12 sober, and from all appearances, happy, healthy and productive, years. What then is the complaint about?

Attention should be paid; on all the good that came out of that life, on the fact of that life at all, and that she should have had so many people to whom she could leave a legacy of sobriety.

And after all, what else defines a life worth living, and a life having been lived worthily?

Attention has been paid.



© res 5/25/2011