Queens Big Book Study – Part 8 – Gary B. – 2008

I was sort of put in this position a few years ago in the Fellowship of the Spirit,
and my wife was sharing out there, Jenny, and Al-Anon.
And I remember just a couple of years ago, a few years ago,
I was speaking as a guest speaker of the Coltsnet group, I think Jim's group at the time,
and Jenny was sitting in the front row.
And I got off the podium after I finished, and she brought me over to the side,
and she said, Tom, that story really never happened that way.
So perhaps a lot of things may be revealed about Gary tonight that we don't know,
so I'm going to give you Julie B.
Thank you.
Well, this is a hard act to follow after what you've listened to for the last day and a half,
so bear with me, and it's been a while since I've spoken.
So it's good to meet up with old friends that are here,
and meet new people that we hadn't met before, and we love New York.
We would come back to New York all the time, given the chance.
In fact, it's now on the list of places that we're considering to spend.
And next year, we will have been married 50 years.
And...
Applause
So that's on the short list, let me say.
As you have heard from Gary, we were born and raised, both of us, in Wyoming.
Now, there are more people in Staten Island than there are in the whole state of Wyoming.
So, you know, we like our space.
Nobody wants to stand at a fishing hole when somebody else,
drives up and wants to use the same fishing hole.
So, they get a little fussy about that out there.
But, we were both born and raised out there.
And...
My mother died when I was five days before my fifth birthday.
My father was one of 12.
They weren't Catholic, they were just passionate Protestants.
And...
But I have...
I wake up some mornings, and I have a real thing going on with my family still.
And most of his brothers and sisters are gone.
There's only one left.
But I just remember that it was a wonderful time, in my eyes, to have grown up.
It was during the war, of course, my grandmother, who was very, very important in my life.
During World War II, I had four sons.
And one grandson, in the war.
And I think about some of the things that I've gone through, and the troubles I've had,
and the worries you have with your family.
And I'm thinking, how in the world did they do that?
How did she get through day by day, for all of those years?
And she lost a son in the hedgerows after D-Day.
And then my mother died six months later, seven months later.
And so there was a lot of joy in our family.
There was a lot of sadness in my family.
But I think that goes with all families.
My father married a couple of years later, and she was always a mother to me.
She was never a stepmother.
She never treated me like the red-headed stepchild I was.
And she was very, very good to myself.
And then she married a man with two kids.
Jim was just six months old.
Jim was just six months old.
Jim was just six months old when his mom died.
So she came into this family, and she helped take over, and she helped raise us.
When I hit high school, I still am, to a degree, a person of rules.
If there is a rule,
I can live within that, you know, and get everything tidy.
If there's not rules, it drives me crazy.
And I like things tidy, and people make fun of me for doing crumbs and, you know,
getting them off the table and all of that thing.
And so I like to know what the rules are, and I want the rules followed.
Now, if there's rules, there's a reason.
And I can't see any reason for not following rules.
And you will ask my children today.
And they will remember their childhood as we cleaned on Saturday.
You know, that was the rule in our house.
Gary and I were working five days a week, maybe six days a week,
and the only day you could clean was Saturday.
And so they will tell you.
Not only were they raised by wolves because we weren't there during the week we were doing A&L later on in Denver,
but we got the mops and the brooms and the wind decks and the paper towels,
and we cleaned.
We cleaned house.
And so they had a very, very, very, very rugged schedule, at least according to them.
But they know how to clean today.
They do know how to do that.
But going back, I was in high school, and I think I was a sophomore.
And, you know, Gary and I disagree on this.
But, you know, he was drinking a bit.
But I was at a basketball game, and I had a date with a guy named Kenny.
That's all I can remember is his name was Kenny.
And we had all gotten on to the park in Cheyenne,
and there's a great big, huge Union Pacific locomotive out there, the engines out there.
And so we were all gathered around there.
Whether it was drinking around, I don't remember.
Probably was.
And so we're standing around, and he comes up to me.
And kind of introduces himself to me, and we were talking.
And then he takes my hand, and we walk off to the green Ford over here.
So I left with he and his friend Bob, and we rode around all night.
That's what you did in the 50s.
You rode around all night on a dollar worth of gas.
You know, you could get $10 worth of or 10 gallons worth of gas for a dollar.
And so we ran around all night.
And then he said, I will call you tomorrow.
And he later said that that was one of the biggest mistakes he ever made
because he called me tomorrow.
So we started dating from there, and we dated off and on, and we'd fight.
And I don't remember whether we fought about drinking or not.
Do you remember whether it was about drinking or not?
I don't know.
But we fought off and on and off and on and off and on.
He's older than I am.
And so...
He graduated and went on to the service and did some time in boot camp.
And we had separated at that time.
And so I had gotten my senior picture.
I sent him a copy of my senior picture.
I got a nasty letter from his good friend Johnny who said, how dare you do that?
Because all he does is look at the picture.
And that was my intent.
And when he came home from boot camp, we got back together.
I don't really remember that there was a lot of drinking.
No more with Gary than anybody else that was running in the crowds.
And we'd had kegers on the prairie.
I never did like beer.
I went out with a guy for a while.
And the big thing in Cheyenne, our big festival is Cheyenne Frontier Days,
which is supposed to be the biggest outdoor rodeo.
And so I know I was with this guy and I was in the Mayflower.
How I got in there, I don't know, because it was 21 for drinking and I certainly wasn't that.
And I was drinking beer, but what I was doing was putting my tongue in the bottle
so it just looked like I was drinking.
I was a pretender drinker.
And so I was doing that and then I'd put it down and kind of mix it with it
because you were standing.
There was no place to sit.
It was just like...
And so I'd kind of scoot the bottle in between the rest of them.
And then he'd say, oh, you're out of beer.
Well, gee, you know, you've got to have another one.
So I think he thought I had a real, you know, a real taste for beer.
And I actually didn't at all.
Today, Gary calls me an alcohol abuser.
I will order a glass of wine with dinner, but then I don't drink all of it real quickly.
You know, so he says that's alcohol abuse.
So anyway, back to Cheyenne.
We did get married.
I was pregnant at the time.
And that's been very, very difficult for me to admit and talk about from the podium.
It's no big deal today.
But let me tell you, in 1959, it was a big deal.
You got married first.
Then you had your children.
And so that was very, very difficult for me.
In fact, I was pregnant four months or five months before I was able to go over
and tell my mother that I was pregnant.
I was so ashamed and so embarrassed.
And I always wondered at that time, how are we going to tell our oldest daughter that we got married,
you know, that her birthday and our anniversary didn't quite do the nine-month deal.
And it was one year we were sitting in Denver, and I guess it was our anniversary or something,
and Carrie starts counting, and she was what?
In junior high, and she said, and she laughed hysterically.
So, you know, there's things that we don't need to worry about.
They kind of take care of themselves, and she thinks it's a stitch right now.
So anyway, so on with the drinking.
So Gary began to not show up a lot at the house.
He was a bar drinker.
I guess he was a bar drinker.
I know he wasn't drinking at home.
And I could not figure out what the problem was.
I couldn't figure out why he wouldn't come home.
I couldn't figure out where the money had gone.
It was a constant, it was just like, I must have been really, really stupid.
I mean, I just didn't get it.
Because it seemed to me that the people we were running with at the time,
they were drinking.
It seemed to me like us or like Gary was.
But yet, they weren't experiencing those problems.
And there came a day when I had asked him to leave.
I could not any longer live the way that I was living.
By this time, we had three little girls.
And the youngest one had been born in August.
And I think I had asked him to leave in like September or October.
He left for a while.
And not for very many days.
And he called and wanted to come back and see the children.
Now, there had been episodes where I thought that he was going to commit suicide.
Now, I didn't care.
At that point, it was like, if you've got life insurance, that's fine.
It would just be a relief to be relieved of the worry.
I mean, it's torturous to live.
It's torturous to live with an alcoholic, an active one.
You're at the window all the time.
You're praying to God all the time for it to be the next car coming down the street to be him.
And yet, when he gets home, you hurry up and jump in bed and pretend you're asleep, you know.
But anyway, he had left.
And he had called and had wanted to see the children.
And...
I had called my father, I guess.
Some of this is fuzzy.
I mean, you guys, I'm old.
It's been a long time, you know.
But I know when he got there, my father was there.
And we had a talk.
It was like an early intervention.
It was Julie and her father and three yelling children.
And I remember Gary sat on this side on this sofa.
And Dad and I sat over on this side on this sofa.
And, you know...
Now, my father had a brother.
My father, who was an alcoholic and died an alcoholic death in DTs on his how-many-ever trip to Evanston, Wyoming.
At that time, that was the only place that we knew for people like that to get sober was in Evanston, Wyoming.
And so the decision was made that Gary would go to the state hospital for treatment.
Now, I packed everything that man owned.
I had a huge suitcase.
I even packed a swimming trunk.
Now, this is in December.
In Evanston.
In Wyoming.
Not a lot of swimming going on.
And I remember my dad's back is to the door.
Gary's standing there with his suitcase.
The kids are screaming bloody murder, you know.
And all I want is them out, out, out.
My father took Gary down to the bus station.
And he later told Gary he didn't care much which bus he got on.
As long as it was leaving Cheyenne.
Now, I always thought that would be a heck of a song for a country western song, you know.
As long as it was leaving Cheyenne.
And so, now, before he left, we did call his mother.
And we told her, by this time, they had gotten smart.
They had moved to Charleston, South Carolina.
And we're living in Charleston.
And I know she worried deathly about him.
Because she had lived similarly with alcoholism.
And he talked to his mother and said that he was going to state hospital.
Now, she gets hysterical on the phone.
Because she thinks he might get off the bus and freeze to death.
I didn't see that as a problem.
All I knew is they were going someplace.
So, he did make it to Evanston.
And he, but they called me from the hospital.
And said that there was a program.
For me, also.
And I didn't have a clue.
I mean, I remember I heard about Alcoholics Anonymous.
In the Jack Lemmon movie, Days of Wine and Roses.
But I think Gary was drinking a lot of beer that night.
When we went to the drive-in to see that movie.
But I do remember that.
I don't remember anything about Al-Anon.
And I contend that today, if you would say Al-Anon to the average person on the street.
They wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about.
They know Alcoholics Anonymous.
Or AA.
But they really don't know about Al-Anon.
And so, when he came home four months later.
I don't think I did anything with the program then.
But when he came home four months later.
We started going to open meetings.
And then three months, or a couple of months after that.
We ended over at the University of Wyoming.
I did get involved with the program at that point.
Now, I want to tell you that in 1965.
There was no literature.
There was no books.
I don't think there were any pamphlets.
There was just not a lot of stuff going on.
It seemed to be this old ladies meeting.
I didn't know the difference.
I remember we used to listen to tapes of some kind.
Whether they were AA or Al-Anon.
I don't know.
I would imagine AA.
But there just wasn't a lot going on.
But I did go.
And what was good about that is there were people like me there.
There were people who had been through what I had been through.
And that was comforting.
Because when you're out.
There in a house with three kids by yourself.
You think you're the only one like you.
You don't know that this is going on in homes around you.
Around the world.
You think you're the only one.
And it gets very, very lonely.
And I can be alone by myself very, very easily.
And hole up.
We were too embarrassed.
Or I was too embarrassed to say anything to our friends about what was going on.
And so when we went over at the University of Wyoming.
We just kind of slipped away.
You know.
Didn't say a word to anybody.
And lost contact with a lot of people.
And we found out later that we owed these people an amend.
We had run into somebody years and years later when we had gone back to town.
They said, what happened to you guys?
Where did you go?
What happened to you?
We didn't realize that we needed to let people know what had happened to us.
You know, we dropped them like they were dirt on our shoes.
Like they didn't matter at all.
And we walked.
We walked off.
I made some notes, if you'll excuse me.
Because my old brain doesn't work real well sometimes.
When I got to Denver, that's when I really found a program of Al-Anon.
And we started going to meetings.
And people were talking about putting the steps in their lives.
Yes.
And I did not have a sponsor early on.
We were very, very involved in open meetings.
I did go to some Al-Anon meetings.
We started going to some conferences.
And I loved every minute of it.
And I must say, the children were partially right.
They did raise themselves a lot.
We would go to meetings and leave them to kind of put themselves to bed.
And one night it occurred to me that if we were not working the program at home,
that we were falling short.
And so we pulled back and started to try and maybe one go to one meeting,
one go to another meeting.
But we were going out almost every night and going to a meeting, you know, getting well,
while the family is kind of floundering by itself.
And then we go out after that for ice cream.
I mean, you know, everybody.
Everybody loves ice cream.
So we would go out for that.
So that's kind of how we lived for a while.
There came a point when the girls, especially the two older ones, were old enough
that I insisted that they go to Allentine.
Carrie, our oldest, lived in our house by herself in the basement,
in her room in the basement, and played guitar.
That's how she dealt with that.
I had been of the...
idea that they really weren't that affected by alcoholism
because they were so young when their father got sober.
I didn't...
It didn't dawn on me that their mother was crazy all that time, you know.
I was not a good mother.
I'm a great grandmother, but I was not a good mother.
I mean, like I told you about the rules, there were rules.
And they will be followed, and you will do this, and you will do that.
And I don't ever remember sitting down and reading to my children.
My grandchildren today adore being read to.
You know, one at five years old is sitting down,
and she just started reading the book because her mother reads to her.
And so it was very...
So I missed a lot with my children.
And I can't blame that on the alcoholic.
I have to take a look at myself and see where my admissions were with that
and how they were raised.
And I would like to blame the alcoholic.
It's easier.
The alcoholic is a great whipping boy or girl
for anything that isn't going right in the family.
But when I got down to Denver and I started trying to do the program,
I think Gary had taken a fifth step.
And there was a friend of his down there that he had talked about him earlier
by the name of Ernie.
And Ernie is...
Tony Banderas Gorgeous.
You know, he's just...
And...
But he's a friend.
You know, he was just always a friend to me.
He was always very kind and tolerant towards me.
And I asked him at one point if he would show me how to write an inventory
because I did not have a clue how to write an inventory.
And so he helped me.
Although it was three columns, we didn't know fourth columns.
Three columns at this time.
Ernie helped me get started on writing my inventory.
And I did take my fifth step with him with Gary's blessing.
I did ask Gary if that's okay.
And he said, yeah, it was.
But I didn't do much more with it.
Like I said, we were just involved in doing activities.
Activities.
The kids were in Alateen.
In fact, Marie was our daughter.
Carrie, I don't think about Patty.
I don't remember.
I don't remember if it was Patty's Alateen sponsor,
but Carrie's Alateen sponsor.
And today she's her Al-Anon sponsor,
and she's also my Al-Anon sponsor.
So the poor mussels can't get away from the browns.
Very far at all.
But it's good to have that relationship in our life today.
But so we were doing the AA and Al-Anon thing.
We were going to conventions.
Gary was doing some speaking.
And, um...
Life was pretty good.
There came a time when Gary's business was in trouble in Denver.
I continued to work all that time.
My pattern early on was not only was I married to an alcoholic,
I worked for them.
So you could guarantee if you were my boss, you were an alcoholic.
It was just like a magnet.
And I was...
My last job that I have in Denver was for an Episcopalian.
I was an Episcopal priest.
And Mickey and Marie lived right down from that church where I worked.
And later on that, he used to go to lunch,
and he didn't like to eat alone,
so he would have me come with him.
And he would drink lunch, and I would eat,
and we'd go to the broker down at Cherry Creek.
And people thought we were having an affair.
Well, it wasn't me he was having an affair with.
It was somebody else in the congregation.
It got really messy.
But if I had a drink,
I'd come back, and then there wasn't computers.
I would promptly put my head on the typewriter and just...
I was gone for the afternoon.
But...
So that's what I was doing.
I was working.
And Gary's job was kind of in trouble.
And we got a phone call.
We had prayed about what to do with his job.
And we had said a prayer one night.
And the next...
The next morning,
he received a telephone call from a friend of ours from...
At the time, I don't know whether he was in New York
or he was in Nashville.
And his name was Don, and I'll say his last name now.
He is deceased.
His name is Don Roy.
And he was looking for a salesman.
Didn't know why he called Gary.
He offered him a position anywhere in the Midwest
to do this traveling thing.
And looking back on it now,
we didn't even really discuss it with the children.
At this time, Gary is a senior.
Patty is a junior.
And Tracy is in middle school.
We did not even consider our children in that mix
to talk about what was going on.
And so I think the answer was, sure.
You know, we'll sell the house.
And they moved us out there.
And we ended up in Indianapolis.
I am glad today that it was Indianapolis that we moved to.
We could have...
We could have lived anywhere in five states in the Midwest,
but that's where we ended up.
Come to find out,
there had been some misrepresentation on the job
and with his state of affairs.
But by that time, we're out there.
We've got a senior in school, a junior in school,
and Tracy's in middle school.
And we can't move them again.
And we've already sold the house.
And we're out there.
And I remember the first time...
Oh, not only did we move out there,
my husband was due to speak in Houston at a young people's deal.
So he drops us off.
He gets in the plane, and he goes to Houston.
I don't know where our grocery store is,
and we're out in the cornfields, you know?
It's like this guy had this big cornfield,
and he decided to make some money,
so he sold some lots off the front.
Jack, wake up.
He sold some lots.
He's my support, and he's falling asleep in the front seat.
So he sells these lots out,
and there's nothing out there.
I don't know how to get to the grocery store.
There is one meeting that I have heard about,
and it's on a long, dark road,
and it's about five miles into this little tiny pound of Southport.
And that's all.
That's all I know.
I am terrified.
I don't like to be by myself.
The kids are angry.
They're very angry.
We have taken them away from boyfriends.
And unbeknownst to us, Patty was planning a getaway.
She had her teddy bear and her suitcase,
and I don't know where she was going to get the money,
but she was getting ready to fly home to Denver.
I found that out.
But they are very angry with us.
They're very angry with us.
They're very angry with us.
They're very angry with us.
They're very angry with us.
They're very angry with us.
Our youngest daughter started running with an older crowd,
and she got in a lot of trouble.
We ended up at the juvenile center with her.
She was one angry little girl,
and today she still doesn't have any love for A.A. and Al-Anon.
She really does not care for A.A. and Al-Anon at all.
But anyway, so we kind of get settled out there.
Now, what I felt like,
was I was like a motel slash whorehouse.
Gary would leave on Monday morning,
and he'd come back on Friday night,
and we'd do the laundry,
and we'd do the sex,
and we'd get to know the kids,
and then he's off on Monday morning,
and he comes back on Friday night,
and it was like, oh, my God.
I was not prepared for this.
This is not how I want to live.
So I found a job,
and one of the first,
one of the first jobs I had was I got through A.A. and Al-Anon,
and it was working at Christ Church Cathedral,
which is a little cathedral that was endowed by Mr. Eli Lilly himself on the circle,
and I was the church secretary.
So not only had I been a church secretary in Denver,
I continued.
And as I look over my career,
it's either been for the police department or it's been for the churches,
and now it's for the state of Indiana.
So that's where I was working for a while,
and then I met a lady in Al-Anon and in Indy,
and she told me they were looking for a secretary
at the victim assistance office at the police department,
and it sure sounded better than what I was doing,
so I went over there and worked with,
off and on for the police department for about 10 years,
and we worked for victim assistance,
and sometimes I was a secretary,
and sometimes I was the backup run car,
and what we would do is sometimes they would send us into places
where policemen did not go in Indianapolis,
and because,
because they knew that the victim assistance people were there to only help.
They did not have guns.
They went in there with their police radios,
and we got children out of bad situations,
or we got people to the hospital,
and we got that out before the police would go in and take care of business.
And in fact,
there was one place in Indianapolis that was called Baby Vietnam
because people did not go in there,
but they would send the women in there,
and nobody ever got hurt.
So that's where I,
I worked for a while.
I started an Al-Anon group in Indy.
They didn't do it the way they did in Denver,
and I didn't like the way they did in Indy,
and so I started my own group.
I also tried to help start the Al-Anon central service office
because there wasn't one,
and we had just began one in Denver.
They didn't want my help in Indy.
They didn't want my suggestions on how it should be done.
Today I can understand that.
I really can.
But anyway,
so we're bopping along,
and Carrie graduates,
and her boyfriend at the time,
who later became her husband,
came out and got her the day she graduated
and took her off to Denver,
and she lived with her Alateen sponsor,
not Marie,
but another one,
for quite a few years.
Our middle daughter,
graduated from high school,
promptly got pregnant,
and lived in an abusive situation.
They came to live with us.
All this time I'm going to Al-Anon,
and Tracy is rocking and rolling.
Like I said,
we ended up at the juvenile center with her,
and we were given,
and they talked to the three of us
for a while,
and then they sent her out in the hall,
and it was Gary and I,
and they said,
if Mr. and Mrs. Brown,
you feel you can no longer take care
and raise your daughter,
give us a call,
and we'll take over,
and we will take her to the girls' school.
And so we came out of that meeting,
and we told her what was going to happen
if any more of this behavior continued,
and she said,
Daddy, those girls will kill me in there.
And he said,
better that,
and see you die on the streets.
She did eventually marry,
and has two of my grandchildren.
I must say that all of our children
have been divorced at least once,
and that's a hurtful thing.
And I don't know if that has to do anything
with her father and I,
or it just happens to be the times,
or it just happened to be
that they made wrong decisions.
But that's hurtful to me.
There came a day when Gary and I
were having a lot of trouble in our marriage,
and I usually don't talk about this from the podium,
but he has shared some today
in the sessions with Mickey and Marie.
We sought out help from a marriage counselor,
and my feeling about that is
I just as well have sat and talked to the telephone post.
It was not helpful for me,
and it brought up things that ended up spilling out
in conversations with the two of us
that took me years to get over.
And I found out that there was somebody
else, and I finally figured out who it was,
and what I wanted to do was murder.
And it wasn't Gary that I wanted to murder,
it was her that I wanted to murder.
And I'm glad at the time that I didn't have a gun
because I would have sought her out.
I was that hurt, and I was having anger.
And what I was was that I was obsessed,
and it gave me something to obsess on.
It was a real good whipping boy for me.
And I obsessed with it, and obsessed with it,
and I don't know if any of you have been obsessed
with that anger and that terror and that fear
and that shame, but I was totally, totally
covered up with it, and I didn't know what to do.
What came to me as a result of this program was
I needed to pray about it, and I needed to give it up.
Well, that's easier said than done.
And so I would, my routine was I would pray
and give it to God, and of course it would,
I'd take it back.
And I would give it to God, and I would take it back.
And I did that all my waking moments.
Trying to work, trying to raise a family,
and pretty soon, the time in between
the thinking about it became longer.
And then it would be over.
And then it became longer, and maybe I wouldn't
think about it for an hour.
Maybe I wouldn't think about it for a couple of hours.
What that did is it brought me a closer relationship
with my God, and what it made me realize is
I do not know in this world where people go
who don't have a God.
I cannot imagine going through that
without a God to turn to,
because there certainly is no human power
on this earth that is going to take that from me.
It is not possible.
About this time that we were going through all of this,
my dad became ill.
My dad had, there was always,
there is some unfinished business with my dad,
and there's no way I can do anything about that.
My dad had a disease.
My dad adored my birth mother so much,
and I was always afraid and never broached the subject with him
because he would begin to cry.
He never got over her death.
He hated doctors.
He blamed doctors for her death.
But he adored her so much.
And the last time I saw my father alive,
he walked in, and he and my stepmother were on a visit.
And we didn't realize how bad his memory was getting.
Because they got lost trying to get out of Indy,
and almost, he couldn't get off.
We have a circle, 465, that circles the city,
and he couldn't get off.
He kept having problems.
But anyway, they got into the house,
and Gary and my mother are standing out talking in the garage
and getting the suitcases and all that.
And dad came into the house, went by me,
and he said,
we would have been married 50 years today,
and kept on going.
And I was so desperate.
I desperately wanted to talk to him about her.
Because she had been raised up, in my eyes,
by his mother, my grandmother, as a saint.
Now, I know there's no walking saints,
except maybe Saint Teresa when she was over in India.
But that's how they presented my mother to me,
as she was this living saint.
She was always treated as a daughter in my father's house,
never as a daughter-in-law.
She was adored by everybody.
That's hard for a daughter like me,
to try and live up to.
So that is one of my regrets,
is that I never had the courage
to sit there and listen to him cry about my mother.
So while we're kind of going through this,
and our marriage is falling apart,
and we're trying to build it up,
we get a phone call that my father was trying out
his new snowblower in Cheyenne and died.
So we did that whole thing,
and...
And later my mother, my stepmother,
we had to put in a nursing home.
So you're sitting there reflecting about what's gone on in your life.
You know, do I owe an amend?
Yeah, probably.
We had to put her in a nursing home.
She got very, very angry about it.
She didn't want to go,
but it was getting dangerous for her to stay in the house by herself.
We were terrified she was going to fall down these horrible basement stairs,
and she kept thinking somebody was trying to get in the house.
And so it was necessary to move her.
And my life's falling apart.
Between my father dying
and my mother going into a nursing home,
Gary came to my work one day.
By this time I was at another place.
I was at a not-for-profit, national not-for-profit,
and he walked into my...
office and told me that my brother had committed suicide.
This was my blood brother.
I have a half-brother.
And I know today, and I'm sure,
I'm pretty positive today that he was alcoholic.
And that's how he chose to deal with his alcoholism.
In Littleton, Colorado, was with a shotgun in his mouth.
It's taken a lot of years to work through that.
We weren't very, very close.
But it was still another living human brain.
It was my only other blood relative that close.
And that's how he chose to die.
And it about killed our little stepmother
because they were very close.
You know, so life goes on, and things happen in families.
And you deal with it.
And I don't remember when I quit going to Al-Anon,
but I thought, you know, I am tired of listening to people.
People are talking about the same stuff.
I am tired of listening to the same things in rooms.
And it isn't like I was reaching out across the table
trying to give my stuff because I wasn't.
And it just seemed to me like there was just,
the meetings were about not solution, but just victims.
People were victim, victim, victim.
And a lot of the ladies that I came in with in Indiana
had kind of dropped out too.
And I must tell you that although I had some sponsors,
very few of them,
very little time did I ever call them,
did I ever work with a sponsor.
It was something that I could say that I had was a sponsor,
but I really didn't work with anybody.
And as was said today,
if you're trying to work a program
and you're doing your own thing,
it just doesn't work very well.
It goes through a lot of pain.
Several years ago,
our oldest grandson, Tim,
was asked to leave his house.
He was about 16, 17 years old, I guess,
maybe closer to 18 years old.
And we knew there were problems over there.
And so he had gone over to live with his grandmother.
And about six years ago,
he's been doing alcohol and God knows what else,
I don't want to know.
And as what happens with the disease,
you never, you know,
he didn't end up living in any great,
he went from the grandmother
who couldn't tolerate it anymore
with his active drinking.
He ended up with some friends
and he lived in abandoned houses.
And I remember we were getting ready
to go out to Denver at one point
and he called me
and he said,
Grandma, he said,
I don't have any food.
Could you get me a little food?
And so I found out where he was.
And he said,
and he was living behind a truck stop.
And I got two huge glasses.
You know, I'm always a savior.
I save everything from tinfoil to people.
You know, need saving, I'm there.
So I got two big things of water
and a couple of whoppers
and I take off for this deal.
And I've got my little convertible
and I pulled up and I saw him coming out
behind the gas station.
And my heart,
my heart just went,
oh God.
And he's standing there and he said,
Grandma, I'm okay.
You don't know how un-okay you are.
You have no clue.
By this time he had always also been
diagnosed with juvenile diabetes.
Don't know how long he's had it.
But of course, yeah,
he's treating himself for diabetic, right?
Yeah, he's giving himself insulin shots.
He's checking his blood sugar, you bet.
But there were just,
there isn't anything you can do.
It's, it's,
that disease is almost as bad as alcoholism.
I want to say even worse.
The denial is there.
You've got to take care of your body.
You've got to do this.
You've got to do that.
Anybody that's associated with it knows it's ugly.
But we had to let him go.
And I,
and there have been many nights
and I've stayed awake just worrying about him.
You know, you play all these scenarios in your head.
You know, none of them,
those are going on,
but you know something's going on.
And you pray
and you don't seem to be getting an answer.
And it got so that
if Gary was going to be out of town,
I did not want to be by myself.
I was afraid to be by myself,
even with a burglar alarm
because I was afraid he was going to burst into the house.
I was afraid he was going to try and rob the house.
We had been robbed before.
And I was,
I was living in a lot of terror.
Two years ago now,
we had gone to an anniversary of a AA and Al-Anon couple.
It was their 80th anniversary or some darn thing.
And then, you know,
everybody in Indy was there
and it was a very lovely affair.
And there is this huge table
and there's this guy that I thought was probably an Al-Anon,
but I'd really never wanted to get real close and find out.
And so I'm first at the table.
I'm at the table with my plate
and I go over to him and I said,
may we sit here?
I'm looking for two seats.
And he said, sure, sit down.
Are you AA or Al-Anon?
I haven't even sat down yet
and I'm getting the grill.
And I said, I used to be an Al-Anon.
And he said, oh, you get cured?
That was my thought.
Whoa.
Do you know who I am?
You know, that's my second thought.
Do you know who I am?
You obviously don't.
So I'm sitting there steaming, eating my hors d'oeuvres.
And there's this lovely lady in Al-Anon in Indianapolis
and she was across the table and we started talking.
And I had just retired.
I had retired in January of 2007.
And so I was feeling my oats.
You know, I'd cleaned the house.
That was always number one,
cleaned the closet, cleaned the windows.
You know, everything's clean, you know.
And man, I'm going to enjoy this retirement.
It's, you know.
But I have a thing to do.
I had not prepared to retire.
I had not.
I don't crochet necessarily.
I can knit if I have to.
I don't do crafts.
I like to read, but they're all murders.
So, you know, I didn't have a lot working for me to retire.
Yeah.
Um.
So, Carol across the way said,
um, Julie, I'd, um, like to invite you to my, uh, Al-Anon meeting.
And it meets on Tuesday morning at 1030 at Club East.
And I knew the one that she talked about
because I've been at that meeting before.
And I said, thank you, Carol.
I'll be there on Tuesday.
Now, you, uh, graduate from Al-Anon?
Or, Julie, I'd like to invite you to my Al-Anon meeting.
You know, honey and vinegar.
So, um, anyway, I, I started going to that Al-Anon meeting.
And there were a lot of the old gals that I had, uh, gone to Al-Anon that went there.
And it was good to renew those friendships.
And it's out of the Al-Anon 12 and 12.
And we read out of the 12 and 12 and then discuss it.
And, uh, pretty darn good meeting.
And what was even more important than that meeting and during that meeting is that there's fellowship afterwards.
It's like the old-fashioned meetings.
We would get there a half an hour early so you could get a good seat.
And then afterwards.
Those who want to, go to lunch.
And that was just my cup of tea.
You know, I was, so I had Tuesday mornings filled and I had retired.
Now I've got six more days to fill in a week.
This is not going well.
You know, and you can only clean so much.
So anyway, I had my, um, that going on.
Um, I must back up and say a little bit.
Um, this grandson who's out there rocking and rolling and, um, dying of diabetes and alcoholism, um, had
fathered a little girl and, um, when she was a year and a half and her, and her half sister, it, it was a Jerry Springer episode, how they lived, her half sister, um, am, were brought by the police to my daughter's house because the mother, still need to write on that one.
I can, I know you can tell that.
So the mother.
Had tried to sell these two little girls for a car.
And so they brought the children to my daughter's house and they have been there ever since.
Now, my daughter was not ecstatic about this whole process.
Number one, she wanted to be a mother, a grandmother, not a mother.
Um, her youngest, there's two boys in that family.
Her youngest is off to college.
I'm done raising kids.
Now, Patty and Bargett said for years and years and years, we want to adopt a little girl.
Well, you know, that kind of went by the wayside.
And so a couple of years later when it became evident that, um, this lady, um, the mother has had, uh, three or four other children also that have been taken away.
It's one of those cases that you just, you know, you just grind your teeth.
Um, that these little girls had fallen in love with Patty and Mark and Patty and Mark are their mom and dad.
So they were working with the welfare.
They were foster parents and, um, it was difficult.
And what they did was they stole our hearts.
But the adoption process, I don't know about New York, but the adoption process in Indiana is a nightmare, a nightmare.
It took five years for that adoption to take place.
We were so terrified that something was going to happen and they were going to rip these children from our hearts and our arms.
Um, and had something happened to my daughter and her husband, they could have ended back up in the system.
How awful is that?
You know, so we were nightly on our knees praying.
Okay.
These children that the adoption process would happen.
Um, again, on my birthday, we sold the house on my birthday.
The adoption happened on my birthday this year.
Um, my 39th birthday.
The 20th anniversary of my 39th birthday.
So, um, we went into the gym.
We went to the judges chambers in, in February and he rang down the gavel and, uh, these little girls are ours.
Um, he did say, however, when they turn 16, don't bring them back.
You cannot bring them back to my chambers when they turn 16.
Uh, and anybody who's had 16, 15, 14 year old girls, you know that you want to do something with them.
Um, I always thought a convent in Aspen.
Would be good, you know, with the nuns, you know, just let them take care of them for a while.
So anyway, they've been in our life and, uh, and they love us.
They call Gary poppy.
I don't get a fancy name like poppy.
I'm grandma.
Um, but that's okay.
Um, but the twist comes with that is it's, um, kind of difficult.
And especially around the holidays is our grandson who is now six months sober.
Haley's father, um, is.
Living with us because he is incapable of earning a living because he is, he is in such pain with his legs.
Uh, no, no, no, neuropathy is that's what's set in and his feet in his legs and he's an incredible pain and he's unable to work.
And he, uh, we had him out there for a while and trying to support him and it just, it was draining us financially.
And so he was living with us and, and the kids today decide that, uh, as of this time, um, he cannot be with the children.
And so that's causing a little.
A little bit of consternation in there and, and it's a pretty delicate situation, but I think he understands because our number one priority have to be these babies have to be these innocent little babies, um, uh, to bring you up to, uh, to, uh, last minute and then I'll sit down and we can let it listen to Peter.
Um, our youngest daughter who is always, like I said, had a problem with alcohol is, uh, the program of AA and Al-Anon, uh, oh, before I want to, before I, I.
I do that.
I want, I want to say that when I got involved with Al-Anon again, a couple of years ago, uh, I was looking for a sponsor and there wasn't anyone in Indiana that I thought that, um, I wanted to be my sponsor.
Did it, there wasn't anybody that had what I wanted and, um, I had seen Gary, uh, sponsor some people long distance.
And so I called Marie and asked her, she'd be willing to do that.
And she has, we have gone through the steps once formally on the phone.
Long distance.
Uh, we talk to each other almost every Wednesday.
I call and it's 6 o'clock in Indy and it's 4 o'clock in Denver and, um, it's been a great relationship.
I hope she gets as much out of it as, as I get out of it.
And what I know is there's somebody on the other end of that phone who knows me.
There's somebody on the other end of that phone who, um, who cares.
There's somebody that will listen to my stuff and there's somebody that's going to tell me.
There's somebody that's going to tell me the truth, um, because we can do a lot of song and dance if we don't have somebody to be accounted for, accountable to.
Our youngest daughter, Tracy, um, had had some problems this summer and she had had, uh, a seizure down at the cabin, down at some friend's cabin and, um, she had gone to her doctor and her doctor said there wasn't anything wrong with her.
Um, but she wasn't feeling right and, uh, she, um, is a real estate appraiser and I don't know about New York but in Indiana real estate is pretty sucky right now.
And so, um, business had kind of fallen off and she had decided that what she was going to do is get a job as a bookkeeper and so she got a book at Payless Liquors.
Uh, in the book, in their, in their, um, in their office part and it's just a couple of blocks from our house.
And, um...
She was doing pretty good, doing pretty good, um, but she had decided, um, the Monday, it must have been November 1st, um, she had finally got an okay to go ahead and get an MRI.
And, um, she had done that and she stopped by the house because she and her husband lived down on the lake in a cabin and there isn't any, um, laundry facilities down there so they do laundry at Mom's.
And, um...
So she stopped by and, um, pick up the laundry and, um, she was sitting there folding the laundry and I'm getting ready to go to my Al-Anon meeting, um, up north on Monday night.
And she goes,
I've got such a headache.
And, uh, she said they told me that the dye from the MRI can cause headaches and so she was really, really in pain.
And, uh, after a while we said, well, why don't you just stay here. Call Jeff and tell him you're going to spend the night.
And, um, you've got clean laundry, you're folding it right now, you can spend the night, um, you have your car, you can run over, you know, go to work.
And she's only been on this job maybe a month.
And so I went to my meeting, I came home and, um, we all get in bed and I hear her up.
And it is the most, I have never seen anybody sleep like this in my life.
I was up with her all night long.
She was tossing and turning and sleepwalking.
And it was just the most bizarre, I, all I could think about is she needs to be in a sleep study.
I mean, I can't believe what's going on.
I've been in a sleep study, you know.
She needs to be in one.
And she'd lay on her back and she'd put her, cross her legs and have them in the air.
And then her mouth was moving.
Then she'd fall off the couch.
Then she'd walk around.
And I, I'm just stunned at what's going on.
And early on when this started happening, before Gary went to bed, we called Jeff.
And Jeff said, that's the way she sleeps.
And I thought, not when I'm sleeping.
I had her, she didn't.
She didn't sleep like that when I knew her, you know.
This is a new husband of a year and a half.
And what have you done to her?
And so at 4 o'clock, I get up.
Hell, I haven't been to bed.
And I make a pot of coffee.
So I made this pot of coffee.
And she gets in the shower.
And I'm sitting on the couch waiting for her.
I don't know.
And I think she went out in the garage to have a cigarette.
I don't know why she was in the kitchen maybe getting a cup of coffee.
And I heard this.
Have you ever heard a pumpkin fall on the cement?
And she fell.
And I screamed.
And I got up and I ran over.
And she is in full seizure.
And her dad woke up.
And I'm crying.
And I'm holding her.
And I try and raise her head off the floor.
Because what we have is a cement slab with laminate on it.
So she's hit cement.
And I look at her.
And she's got this big black thing here where she must have hit the handle of the pantry when she went down and flipped and turned.
And later she had a soft spot on the back of her head like this.
And so I held her and cried while she's having the seizure.
Gary hurries up and gets dressed.
And I don't know how long it lasted.
I'm telling people that it lasted for 20 minutes.
I don't know whether it lasted at this time anymore for 20 minutes.
I don't know.
All I know is I'm watching my baby.
And I don't know what to do about it.
That is the most helpful, helpless thing I have ever gone through in my life.
I have never seen anything like it.
When she finally stopped seizing, it took almost the two of us to lift her up and to get our arms.
Gary put his arms under her.
And we walked her out to the Jeep.
And we got her out there.
And we took her to the emergency room.
And she had another seizure.
Promptly had another seizure in the emergency room.
She's trying to slide off the gurney.
She don't want to be there.
She's in a tight ball.
They give her anesthesia shot.
She's in a tight ball.
And they had to tie her to the gurney.
And we had gone to the wrong hospital.
We should have gone to the old hospital.
And we didn't.
So they had to take her by ambulance to the new one.
And the upshot of that is we don't know what happened.
And they've done many, many, many, many, many, many CT scans and EEGs.
And they don't know what caused it.
And they say we probably never will know what causes that.
Where do you go?
You go to God.
And you pray.
And you pray.
And at this point, it's hard for me to ask for God's will.
My will is for my kid to be okay.
My will is for my kid to live.
My will is for my kid to be able to speak.
It took her sister until like the third day she was in the hospital
to try to explain.
To try to explain to her because she is angry.
She is very, very angry.
And she can't figure out why she's tied to the bed,
why they've got a cath in her,
why they're watching her like a hawk.
She's in CCU and there's somebody with her every second.
And they just, you know, they won't leave her alone.
And she is really angry.
It took her sister until the third day to tell her,
Tracy, you have a massive head injury.
You have cracked your skull in two places.
And she goes,
Oh, that makes sense.
It was like she came out of this fog.
She did not know what happened to her.
As a baby, she cracked her skull twice falling out of a high chair
in 24 hours on cement at student housing.
She comes from a cracked skull.
Great mother that I am, you know.
And another time she was hit by a car in Denver and left on the sidewalk.
And we never did that again.
We did find out who did that.
And it was like the guy almost took her face off.
But anyway, so this is our life today.
Without alcohol, you know.
Gosh, we all have trauma without alcohol.
Imagine.
She still has headaches.
She has blurred double vision.
She had to be retrained for that job.
Can you believe that those people kept her?
They kept her.
They kept her.
I was so sure that they were going to let her go.
But they kept her.
But they've had to retrain her because she didn't remember anything.
She's been a real estate appraiser for years and years and years.
And a little bit of work was coming in, so she took it.
She's now back at work.
And I said,
Are you able to remember when you're filling out the forms?
And she said,
There are times when I look at the form and I don't know what they're talking about.
You know, I just don't know what they're talking about.
So we assume that the prognosis is going to be okay.
She can't drive until she sees her free for six months.
So her husband, Jeff, does what he calls driving Miss Daisy.
And she has a real estate job.
He takes her to there.
And she gets, you know, she does the measuring and she does the deal and does her magic with her figures.
But he calls me driving Miss Daisy.
So when we get home on Sunday, she's going to be with us Sunday night because Jeff's got a job.
Now he wasn't employed and he's got a job and he starts on Monday.
And so she's going to be at our house a lot.
So we're going to have a full house again.
Tim's in the back room and Tracy will be on the couch.
I can't imagine, I just cannot imagine my life without Michael.
My life without my God.
And I get mad at him.
And he doesn't do things on time.
And he doesn't do them exactly the way I want them done.
But you know what?
His timing is always good.
And his answers are always perfect.
See, when we got into this deal and Gary got sober in the nuthouse, my idea was this is what we're going to do.
Gary can work at the hospital as like an orderly or something.
You know?
He can empty bedpans.
He can empty bedpans and I'll do something and we'll just stay up in Evanston, Wyoming.
This is where my thinking takes me.
Evanston, Wyoming in bedpans.
I mean that's as far as I go.
I am sitting here before Christmas and I'm in New York on Staten Island and this is incredible.
It wasn't supposed to happen that way.
I'm a little girl from Wyoming.
I have no business in New York at all.
We have been able to do some traveling.
And whoever knew that this program could be so kind.
And I love you all.
Thank you.
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