Why the Best Person to Take Advice From Is Not You – Mary P.

She just ruined my opening line. I was going to say, by the grace of God, good sponsorship. I haven't found it necessary to kill my husband since January 15, 1977. I've wanted to. I just haven't found it necessary. You having a problem over here? I am grateful. So I'd like to thank Marlene and the committee for allowing me to come and join with you to celebrate in your 30th anniversary. I celebrated my 25th last week, and I'm just, like I say, I'm really grateful to be here. People at home said, You're going to Nebraska in January? And I said, I'll go to Nebraska any time. I love those people. Y'all are one of my favorite places to come, and I really appreciate all of you, andI love you very much. I'm supposed to share my story I assume what if I don't want to I can do anything I want I want to know who was responsible for the flyer I'm one of those picky Elanons my name is Mary Pearl with no E there is no place at South Little Rock Alaska I don't know how more you could have screwed it up the tradition for being unorganized is really alive here I love it, we screw up all the time I just love it when the others do too Well, I am grateful to be here How many people have noticed I have a change since you saw me last? And for those of you who have been asking No, I do not have cancer I love that You look great if you got cancer Y'all are so sick Or my second favorite is You look so good now Which says you were a dog before You insensitive beasts And y'all call yourselves sensitive alcoholics Bull No, I have made some life changes In the last couple of years And these were not of my choice But, you know, all things happen And good things come out of bad things And in November of 1999, exactly 45 years to the day that I watched my father die of a heart attack, I watched My Sister die in the front seat of my car with me. And she had gone into renal failure and it threw her heart into a bad rhythm and it stopped. And I look over there and she choked a couple of times, her eyes rolled back in her head and that was it. And I'm going, oh, my God, because, I mean, this is Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I'm in bumper-to-bumper traffic in front of the biggest mall in our state. And I am saying, God, what do I do? Do I give her CP? What do I doing? What do you want me to do? What do we do? And it's like, oh my God what do i do? And about that time I saw a motorcycle cop coming, which you never see at home anymore. And I perceived that to be an angel. and he got the traffic to part and there was a new hospital that had just opened a couple of weeks before and I rushed her over there and they were able to resuscitate her but she was down, they think, between 10 and 12 minutes. So my sister is no longer the sister I had. She has profound anoxic brain injury which means that her memory of the last 15 years is totally gone and her day-to-day memory, I mean, she'll ask you the same question 15 times in 30 minutes. So it's a sad situation. But what happened during that period of time when I was waiting, she was in a coma and they were giving her dialysis and the doctors noticed there was something wrong with me. I couldn't quit shaking. And I've learned in the program, you know, that you can't help other people if you can'T take care of yourself. And the doctor said to me, honey, you don't need to be sitting here in this waiting room. You need to being seen. And I said, but you don�t understand. He said, yes, I do understand. There's nothing you can do for her. She's probably not going to make it. But there is something you can doing for you and I suggest you do that. And so I went to a family physician and in a very few short minutes they determined that I was borderline diabetic, and there was something wrong with my heart. And they sent me to a cardiologist where I promptly failed my EKG, and I promptly filled my stress test, and I failed my nuclear test. I'm telling you, this is really degrading to an A-plus student, you know. I'm not used to failing tests, you now. And so then they said, well, we'll catheterize her heart. So I'm in the hospital in one town, and my sister's in the house in the other and JD is just berserk because he said both my women are down you know and uh the doctors told JD that they anticipated having to do heart surgery immediately on me but as it turned out and I don't know I do know that while I was being prepped for the procedure that uh I overheard the nurses talking and they said there's another lady in here and her husband's out there in the waiting room and the rest of those people are for this lady and they all came in and they gathered in my little cubicle there and out through the edges and they had to pull the curtains out there was just some and they All got around my bed and they held my hands and they prayed with me. And I think that's the reason that I didn't have to have that emergency heart surgery. But they did determine that I had a problem with my heart and and I was going to have to do my life differently. And thank God for our program because, you know, if we learn anything in here is that you don't have to want to do it to do it, you don'T have to like it to DO it, you just by God DO it. You know? And so that's what I was gonna have to DO. I was Gonna have to Do those things that I didn't want to DO in order to get the result that I wanted to have, which was I had to be alive to take care of my sister because we're all we have left as family. so in eight months i lost 100 pounds now for those of you who knew me before i'd been on high blood pressure medication from the age of 30 i'm no longer on blood pressure meditation i'm not i'm on heart medication i went to my heart doctor last week i told him it was a week of celebration and it was not only did i celebrate my 25th anniversary i celebrated the fact that my heart is doing a normal EKG these days, that I'm in the best physical shape I've been in and I am smaller than I was when I graduated from high school. And that's through the help of God and what I learned in the program of AA and Al-Anon and through the prayers of the fellowship I shall be forever grateful, forever grateful. And I want you to know just because you're in this program doesn't mean you are bulletproof. Bad things can come to happen. Life is going to continue to happen to you. And right after I got all this stuff and found out I was going to croak if I didn't do something different very quickly, my baby died. I had my two poodles. As you all know, I'm a dog person. I have no children. And Voodoo, he was 16 years old and he died. And I thought, I can't stand this. I just can't. The next month, a girl that I sponsored died 40 years of age with a pulmonary embolism. I said, God, I can't handle all of this stuff. A few months later, Voodoo's partner, Dancer, died. So I lost all of us, and then we had the ice storm that year. And we lost a lot of our trees, and I got to sit there and watch all of my fish, some of which I'd had 17 to 18 years die for lack of oxygen when we were totally powerless for a week. You know, it was a bad year. And, you know, if you told me that when you've been in the program this long, this kind of stuff would happen, I'd say, well, who needs it? But once again, if I hadn't had the program and people, people in this fellowship encouraging me and loving me, I would not be here today. So, like I say, I am very, very grateful. But life is, you know, not all, you know, all things come to pass. Good things come to pass, bad things come to pass and this year, like I say, I have felt better, I've been able to do things that I've never been able to do before in my life. I want you to know that this past summer in June, I went to Alaska. I hiked the Chilkoot Trail. It said moderately strenuous. Is there anyone else here who has hiked this trail? On this scale of moderately strenuous Strenuous is when you nail those little hooks Into the face of the rocks And hang by ropes It was two miles straight up rock You have to make your own little hand holes and foot holes And I'm going, my God in heaven Why am I here? I am here because I saw bears in the wilderness I am here because I saw swans and their natural habitat on that little hike. I saw eagles and the big nests and everything. All those things I would have missed if I hadn't been able, and physically I would never have been able to do that before. And we get to the very end, and then you get the whitewater raft back. Oh, boy. Hey. I survived that. I'm telling you These people on Survivor don't even know What tragedy is Not at all And as a result This summer I have reservations to White Raft Hell's Canyon in Idaho We'll see how that goes But life is good And then back in the spring I was up in Toronto and I had been looking for more babies. And I went up there and I found there was a lady in Ontario who had the kind of poodles I wanted. She had the big black miniature poodles and I wanted those dogs and I saw hers and she had one that looked just like my voodoo. And I said, that's the mama. And I knew it before, like say I saw her but it was so funny, she walked into the room and went, and there were several people in that room And she walked right over to me, laid her paw on my leg. I looked down at her and she licked my face. And as Rick said who was with me, and Mary Pearl melted. And that became the mother. And I picked out the father and then on the day, in the first of August, my birthday is the third of August. It's my natural birthday. And the babies were born. And so on the 1st of November, I made a 2,400-mile trip to pick up two dogs so we have babies again. It's awful. I had forgotten what it was like. I mean, I'm old now. I'm not up to this, you know? I mean, I'm out in the backyard at midnight with a flashlight trying to find the remote control. They decided that I didn't need that piece of carpet that goes from the living room into the kitchen, you know. Oh well. They decided I didn't need the rug I stand on in front of the kitchen sink One of those cushioned rugs It's now a flat piece of paper You have to take the bitter with the better And I look at them And I think, I'll kill you, you little black bastards I'll tell you, so help me I'm going to kill you And then they'll look at you and go And you go, oh well, it's only a rug You know, it's been a real experience. But, I mean, we're going through it. It has its ups and downs, and they can be real sweet. One of the funnier things that's happened is that we have a new bed. And our bed is one of those real tall beds now. You know where you have to throw your butt out of gear to get into bed? You need a ladder. It's sort of like a redneck truck, you know. I don't know why they couldn't have made that padded bed lower to the ground. But anyway, Bubba gets up there and far, and Bubba walks past and he looks and he sees there's another dog. It's the mirror of the dresser. So we didn't get to sleep that night because he was worried. But, you know, these are joys These are joies that are going on in my life today Because life is good Life is good Bad times will come My ordeal with my sister Now, you have to develop a way to deal With that kind of tragedy My sister had been an executive With Procter & Gamble for 48 years A brilliant woman and to see her with her mind. She was a voracious reader, and she can't read anymore because she can put the book down, pick it up five minutes later, and doesn't know what she's read. And so, you know, she doesn't have that. She sits in her chair. She watches too much television, I think. And she works jigsaw puzzles. Man, does she work the jigssaw puzzles. We were going to repaint the house. There's no need. There's not wall. I mean, she's got puzzles and they decoupage them and then they put them and hang them on the wall. And I said, well, the walls are just about full. We'll do the ceilings. I mean it's okay because it's something that she's doing, she's enjoying and what have you. And, you know, she has such little in life to do. But Dorothy will say things. She's like dealing sometimes with a 5-year-old child. and you're powerless when you've got a five year old in an adult body you are powerless to make her do or not do things so many times even though I am her guardian but Dorothy will say to me we will go to the grocery store and I'll say Dorothy we don't need 15 bananas and she will throw them across the produce department don't tell me what I can have and what I cant have So then I get her right in her face And I say, you're going to go to the car I'm going to send you to the cart And she'll say I don't want to go into the car Then straighten up We'll get to the checkout And she fills the cart with all the things She can't eat And so I've learned now Go to the same checker every time So you don't traumatize the entire staff And I just won't get those items out of the cart And then we check them through And I tip them to put them back on the shelf You know And Dorothy will say What about my stuff And I'll say Not paying for that stuff You are so mean I said yes That's the reason mother named me Meanie Pearl And then she'll go and then it's over she said to me would you promise me something I said I don't know what is it she said if I die in the car again with you will you let me stay dead and I said Dorothy trust me if you die in the car with me again I will drive around with you five or six hours till you are stiff as a damn poker And she said Good You know You have to learn To deal with it The best way you can And so this seems To work for us And you know It's like my sister when I talk to her today. She says, where are you? Where are you, and I'll say, oh my god, why? Who do you know up there, and Dorothy used to live up here, and I said, I know a lot of people up here. And I said they're real kind and loving people. She said, are you coming home? I said yeah, I'll be home tomorrow. She said, when are you coming home. I said tomorrow. She said how long is that? I I said, not too long. You go sleep tonight and you'll wake up and I'll be there. And it's sad. It's real sad. But, you know, I had to, years ago, Cajun Joe used to hand out, I guess he still does, hands out these little cards. And on this little card is a little prayer. And it says, God, thank you for all you have given me. God, think you for what you have done for me. God, for all that you have taken away. God, take you for everything you have left me. And this year has been for me to focus on what's left, as I was very angry for the first year about what had been taken away because my sister was pretty much my best friend. We did everything together. We traveled together. My sister was my surrogate mother all my life, and so it has been very difficult to let go of that. But I'm grateful that I still have her no matter how she is. I have her, and whatever God's plan is, I'm okay with that. It took me a while to get there, but I'm so grateful that I have steps and I have people to share with who've been there ahead of me and had to walk that wall. You never know what life is going to bring. That's the reason it's so neat to have all of us here because with all of our life experiences, somebody here has had to experience something like you have or will going to or whatever you know you've got it all here right for you and this was something i never had when i grew up i was a spoiled kid my daddy spoiled me rotten and uh my sister like i say she's a lot older than me and my brother was older than her and i had a brother that was dead that would actually died up here and um and it was real funny because i was looking taking a girl to do her uh she had on her fifth step she had been real angry at her parents and their parents were dead so we went out to the National Cemetery to tell her about it she had written them a letter she wanted to read she wanted me to go we took a little shovel with us and so we got out there and she read the letter she kicked the stone and we were digging a hole in the National Cemeter burying the letter after she tore it up I was watching the guy mowing so that we could put the shovel down when he would. We weren't taking anything. We were leaving something. And on the way back across the cemetery, I found the grave of my brother who died, and it had been lost from the directory all those years, and I was able to find it. So that was sort of a closure thing too to be able. So my whole family is out there now with the exception of me and Dorothy. When I took her there, she kept saying, Is Mother dead? And I'd go, Yes, Mother's dead. She said, well, I wonder why she didn't come see me. And we go out there at the cemetery, you know, and I said, see, there's Mother Stone, and Dorothy just stands there, and she looks at it, and she says, it's so confusing. Was I here? And I said yeah, honey, you were in charge of the funeral and everything. And she said, it is so confusing to see that stone and not to remember. And I can only imagine. It would be like having a continuous blackout, I guess, that you're living in. That must be very, very horrible. But anyway, here was my sister and my brother. They were married and gone by the time I was seven years old. I was an only child. And I loved that status because I got all the attention. And, in fact, I can't remember when I didn't get all the attention. And looking back at family photos, you see my brother and my sister and me, and I look like I'm their kid. Exactly. And they were old enough for me to be their kid. And my daddy died when I was 12, and that was a real traumatic thing because my life as I knew it changed. Everything changed because I didn't like my mother. My mother was a person that had a lot of rules and regulations, and I didn' t like people with rules and regulation because being a self-centered individual, I wanted to do what I wanted do, when I wanted it to do it, how I want it to it. I think that's how most of us get here, you know. And that's not life. You're not going to be able to deal with life on life's terms when you have that kind of an attitude. And that was the attitude I had. And my mother tried her best. She tried her very, very best. But you know, some kids are just going to do their thing. And it wasn't because I wasn't taught good values. It wasn't Because I wasn' t taught manners and to respect people and property and stuff. That had nothing to do. Self-will ran right in this person. And I was going to do my own thing, and I turned my back on God at the age of 12 because God took my father, and if God took me, if God did my daddy, I didn't want anything to do with him. Now, did that mean I never went to church again? No, I never skipped a beat. Went to every church thing because you had to if you lived in our house. But I wasn't buying the deal. I just went living for the day when I didn't have to go there anymore. And when that day came, I didn t. I married a man who was Yankee and should have known it wasn't going to work right then. He was a broken person as well. His mother and father had separated shortly after his birth. He never saw his daddy until he was like 17 years old, and his mother died when he was 12. And he was left with a grandfather who did not want him, he and his sister. And so he lived to get away from home, and he lied about his age on his application into the Air Force and went into the air force. And when the air Force base opened there in Little Rock, he was stationed there and we met and we got married, and then we went to Newfoundland. Not a place that was on my schedule to go. I always wanted to go and see the world. I was one of those, I'm an adventure junkie. And I found out something about that. Adventure junkies run on adrenaline. Adrenaline is very hard on your heart. So when you have heart trouble, are we surprised? You know, and, you know, the bottom line there was I was this adventure junky, and I was going to do these things. And like I say, I wanted him to take me away from home in her. So I got married. Not because I loved this man. I thought I was in love like most kids do. I was involved with the idea of being in love, did not have a clue what love was because it was all about me and love is not all about you. Love is where can I serve, not what can you do for me. And that was the kind of person I was. Well, I worked for the Red Cross when I lived overseas. And as such, I had a job with a little power in it because if you're in the military, you know you don't get an emergency leave without Red Cross verification. So I got to know all the uppity-ups and do stuff. I had a little black market there on the flat line for a while. I liked living on the edge, you Know. I always did like living on The Edge. And I got in trouble with my marriage there because I'd forget I was married. See, I had memory problems long before Dorothy's thing. it's called purposeful forgetting i believe and it's mentioned in the 12 and 12 but anyway um i i ruined my marriage there with that kind of bull but you know how we're going to keep trying we're gonna just try it again and again and until we can just see how miserable we can possibly get you know i never know anything spoiled till it's ruined you know it's got a grow mold and i go oh is something wrong with this you know so we uh we got transferred back to Arkansas and I told my husband I said oh I need to be separated and I wanted to be separated I wasn't ready to be self-supporting on my own voluntary contributions and so I used this man and he did not want to be divorced from the home situation he came from you know it's like don't get a divorce no matter what and i played on that and so we didn't get a divorce but he went on and went to the next base when uh the rotation came and i stayed there and now i'm free i am so free it's like when he left i became free because he was the problem don't you know well everything went all right for about two or three days, and I have this boredom problem. You know, I can't stand boredom. I have to have some excitement, so I begin to always look outside for excitement, and I noticed that this boy and his wife live across the street from us, and every time he'd go out and drink, he'd get drunk, come home, and beat her up, just like my mama's family. Everybody in my mama'S family except my mama was an alcoholic. They'd go out, get drunk, come home, beat one another up, burn a house down. What the heck? One uncle shot his toe off. You know, I mean, he thought it was a snake in the bed with him. He was seeing snakes. He Was my favorite. He was married seven times. He had a woman problem. He actually died in bed with another man's wife. He got shot again. Now, I liked him. He was fun to be around because he was exciting. You never knew what was going to happen when you was Uncle A.B. Well, this boy across the street, he's acting like this, so I knew he was one of them. Well she was pregnant. She went into labor one night. She came over to my house. He'd come home drunk, beat her up. So she gone into labor. And here she was and her mouth was busted and her eye was turning color, and she said, would you take me to the hospital? And I said, sure. So I went over there with her and there he was, passed out on their bed with this smirk on his face. And I looked at him and I thought, you know, somebody ought to whip your butt. And then it came to me. I'm somebody. My first spiritual awakening. So I took a bed slat out of his bed, I tied him up in a sheet, and I beat the fool out of him. Made me feel good all over. Next morning he came over to my house and he said, I was in a hell of a fight last night. I did not enlighten him. But this was a preview of coming attractions. Then there was an alcoholic lived on the other side of me. it's like I've been a carrier everywhere I go there y'all are you know they're everywhere if you're a doctor, you're dentist everybody's got to be an alcoholic don't you know if you like them they're bound to be that's like anytime I've ever been attracted to anybody how much do you drink and if they say only two get away from me that's the only question they need on that pamphlet when you drink do you drank more than two if they no alcoholic because y'all never admit to more than two so anyway I had problems with the next door neighbor I had troubles with this one and that one and the bottom line was the sheriff started coming to see me because my behavior got a little bizarre I would do things to the neighbors and what have you to irritate them and so I decided maybe I better not do this and I joined the neighborhood softball team and it was a mixed team And we had a lot of fun, and after the game, we'd go back to someone's house and we'd talk about our strategy for our next game. And some of them would pop a few tops, some ofهم would smoke some little weird things, some ofthem were sniffing stuff, and others had these little sugar cubes, just your normal neighborhood team. And you see, I had to be around people like that because I didn't do that kind of stuff, and I hadto have somebody I could say, I'm not that bad. And after a while, that gets tricky to find somebody to run around with, you know, because if you keep lowering your standards there, you knows. And if you hang around with people who do things like that long enough, you will too. You will too." And so, of course, those are things I know now that I didn't know then. But anyway, it was my turn to have everybody over at the house, and one of the guys on our team was an 18-year-old kid, and he got drunk at my house. Well, I knew if he got picked up going home, the sheriff would come to see me. I didn't want to have to deal with that mess So I was driving him home And it was around Mother's Day And he had a china tea set in his truck And he got it for his mother Well you know how helpful we are So I know he's going to drop it and break it Because he can barely walk So it's wee hours of the morning And I am carrying a china tee set Following a drunken 18 year old kid Into a home I've never been in before in my life Your typical situation And he flipped the light on in his room And there was a man laying on the bed With nothing but his underwear on And he looked up and he said, well, hot damn little brother, you brought us abroad home. And I said, not tonight, fella. But that's JD. Later on that summer we met again and we started dating and it was just wonderful. I mean, we had more fun together, and for the next three or four years, we just really had a good time. And then all things must come to an end. J.D. ruined it. He asked me to marry him. This is when you have a moment of clarity. And it's like, I can't marry you. And he says, well, why not? Don't you love me? I said, that has nothing to do with it. And he said, well what do you mean? And I said... I'm already married. He said, you sure didn't act married. I said well, I forgot. to show you how sick he was, he still wanted to marry me. A woman who can't remember she's married. You know, he's not reptile either. So I got a divorce and alcoholism moved into my home. Now I had not a clue that he was an alcoholic because he didn't behave like my mother's people did. And J.D. drank. It was totally different. And I thought all alcoholics had to be under the bridge winos or fighters and do things like my mother's family did. And so it never occurred to me that he could be an alcoholic, and besides, I wasn't going to let him be an alcoholic. You know, I knew he didn't know how to drink right. I tried to teach him how to drank. That wasn't too successful. I drank with him. I tried a drink before he would, but that wasn't too successful either because you lose what's happening around you when you drink too much. And see, I've got to be able to have control of that situation. And when I start to feel it, I have to quit because something might happen and I'd miss it for God's sake. I don't want to miss it. And besides, if you drink too much, you get sleepy or you puke all over yourself. Who wants that? You know, so I tried so hard to be an alcoholic too. I really worked hard. But anyway, alcoholism came to my home and J.D. and I got very, very sick together in those years of alcoholism. There was a lot of violence in our home. Not from him, from me. I was the one You know, I would have to put him out of my misery He didn't mind I told him he couldn't drink He'd go out and drink And when J.D. drank He also was a womanizer And I didn't like that And so I would go searching for him We played hide and seek He'd hide and I'd seek him And I'd find him, you know He'd be in places I wouldn't be caught dead in On a normal day But in alcoholism, what is normal? And so I go in, and what was normal for me was I go in, I look around, there he is. He's at a table with a lower companion. I go over, slap her flat, throw a drink in his face, proceed to pulverize him and the bouncer throws me out. And I'm only there trying to save my home for God's sake. And so then I'd go around or two with the bouncer and then I would go to jail. It wasn't fun. But I didn't do that just one time I did that many times and then I got tired of that and so then I would stay at home and wait and I would pace the floor and when he'd come in then the war would take place and then I would beat him to a pulp and then he would pass out and then i would take a washcloth and put it in ice water and then beat him in the face and say wake up i'm gonna talk sense to you You know, that's the crazies That's the crazies We get crazy The families get crazy You know I think the alcoholics have it over us Because they can pass out Or they get relief We don't get relief We don' t get relief We get a lot more neurotic You can put down alcohol And you're going to get a little bit better It's much slower for us But however It's been my experience over the years that inside, I'd say most alcoholics, if not every alcoholic, lives a screaming Al-Anon. Because y'all seem to do like we do after y'ALL get sober. Have you ever thought about that? Don't y'All get quick enough tight? Okay. Stepping on toes tonight. Woo-hoo! Huh? That's it. It's a full moon. I saw it tonight. Woo! So like a group election night at my home group, instead of voting we go, woo! Anyway, here we are. We're sick. We're sickness. Sick people. I take him to the family physician. He gives him a prescription for antabuse because that's what J.D. wanted. He told him there was Alcoholics Anonymous, and J.D. said, I'm not an alcoholic. I said, that's right, he's not. He is not an alcoholic. I will not have an alcoholic, and so we got the prescription for antibiotics, and what I heard the doctor say was if you give him the pill, he can't drink, but that's not what the doctor said, but now I've become keeper of the pills because he can be trusted. Now, by this time, I have high blood pressure, an epileptic dog, and he's on the pills. Every morning in a hurry, I can't guarantee who got what, but everybody got a pill. It was the year that I was going to get really neurotic because he's not drinking and everything's not okay. And if you blame somebody for how you feel for all these years and then they're not drinking and you're still not okay, where is the problem? It's him! It wasn't a drink and it was just him! You've heard the Earl's got to die? Well, J.D.'s got to die. It came to me. It came for me. It came when I was having a little meeting in my head. I am so miserable. Geez, I am too. God, why don't you get a divorce? You can't get a diverse. Why can't I get a divorced? Well, you've already had one divorce. I know. Geez, could there be something? I don't want to go there. Not going there. But you know, if you were a widow, what was that? Well, if you were a widow But he's not dying No problem We can take care of that Well, what do you want to do? Well, I want to stab him in the neck With an ice pick And watch him drip Boy, how I like that one Or How about this Why don't we Roll over him with a car And squish him up in the tread Make a note Buy new tires and I began to feel better I began to dream about murdering him it was better than any sex we were having not a good time not a great time and then I read in the paper where a woman had killed her husband and they put her butt in jail I said not if I'd have been on that jury tacky tacky so now I've got to have another meeting you know So we got together again, and we're sitting there discussing the situation, and all of a sudden it came to us. If an alcoholic could pass out in the bathtub and drown, who would know? It was a group conscience. We all liked it. So all you've got to do is wait now. And sure enough, a year to the week he quit drinking on antabuse. Guess what? He got drunk. We had ice and snow. And I heard him when he came in the driveway or made an attempt. And the car, it sounded like it was doing 60 in a second. This truck, and he came zipping, and he hit the hitching post horse out at the end. It was cast iron. Boop! Locked it over. And then he went tearing across the yard, hit a tree, and then bounced into the side of the house. And I looked, and I said, Boy, he cannot drive on this. But then he opened that truck door, and he poured out. I'd seen that too many times. And I said I'll kill that S.O.B. if it's the last thing I ever do. And so when he opened the door, I never said a word. just hit him as hard as I could. And when he fell, he hit the coffee table. It knocked him out. And I drug him down the hall, around the living room, across the hall into the bathroom, ran in the bathtub full of warm water, took his clothes off, put him in and held him under until the bubbles quit coming. He's laying there in the bottom of the tub. This voice says, you can't do this. I said, what? He said, you can'T do this! I picked him up by the hair on the head and said, the hell I can'T! And I put him back down again. The voice came back, now this is not a committee member. It says, don't you realize you're killing the person you once loved? And it's like, it talks about in the big book, there's a moment of clarity in which you see yourself as you truly have. And I had become an animal to fight an illness. And it scared me to death. and I jerked him up out of that tub and I resuscitated him. Thank God I had worked for the Red Cross. And I took him in our bedroom. I dried him off, put him in bed, got the hair dryer, dried his hair, didn't want him to catch a cold. And I closed the door on that room and I did not go back in there for three days and I heard him beg for help. I heard he scream. I heard talk things. I had heard him hallucinate many times before. That did not bother me, but what I didn't know was anything about alcoholism, and J.D. had alcoholic poisoning, and he nearly hemorrhaged to death in there. So it's only by grace of a loving God that he's still alive, and I'm not in a prison somewhere today. Truly, it's by the grace of God. And back in November, we celebrated 32 years. Can you believe that? if it hadn't have been for god and these fellowships we would never have been together i can guarantee you that i can warranty that well it was different this time you know how we're always saying this time it's going to be different it was and um i came home from work one day and jay he was sitting at our bar and he was shaking so hard and he said would you call that number, that Alcoholics Anonymous number for me. He said I've been trying all day long and I keep getting the wrong number. I'm shaking so hard and so I said alright and I called and I got the central office and there was a wonderful lady there. Her name was Mary Peeler She's in that big meeting now and Mary told me that there was a meeting in one hour's time just six blocks from our house in a community building that my grandfather who died of alcoholism built and where I went to Girl Scouts as a kid I couldn't believe it. So I took J.D. to his first AA meeting because he was not in any shape to drive anywhere or do anything and there was an old guy that came over that night who looked worse than my grandpa did when we buried him and he said boy I'm going to be your sponsor I was not impressed but to make it even worse when we first walked in they told him we have Al-Anon and you can go to AA to me they thought I was the drunk I mean, I had on this leopard skin coat and a red hat Pulled all the way down in checkerboard sunglasses at 8 o'clock at night Why would somebody think I had a problem? I just didn't want to be seen with a group of y'all For God's sake, you know It was bad enough having one drunk Why go be with a GROUP of them, you kno Well we got that straightened out pretty quick And I told the ladies in the L9 group I said, there's nothing wrong with me. I don't need anything. Thank you very much. And so then J.D. began to get better in AA, and there's Nothing Worse Than Somebody Getting Better and It's Not You. So as time would have it, J.B. had prayed and asked God to help him stay sober. And one of the first things God did was relieve him of his job. He could drink on the job all those years. And so God removed him from his playground and his playmates. And then that scared me because that two days a week that he worked, when he worked Was an illusion that he's working And now I felt all of the responsibility like a gigantic burden on me And how was I going to do? So I went to the Al-Anon meeting for two questions A. How do you keep an alcoholic sober? And B. How Do You Manage When There's Nothing Left To Manage? And there was a smart aleck there and she said C. We don't know and i wept you know i think i mean i blurred myself to come here you don't have the answers you know and they said but we understand and today i can tell you those are two of the most comforting words in the whole world because they followed it up by sharing their experience strength and hope and when i went to the meeting there were only two al-anon women in that meeting and they had two visitors that came that night took four of for me. Needed them every one and then for the next year you found me every night in a meeting of Al-Anon or Alcoholics Anonymous open meetings and I fell in love with the fellowship of Al Anon and AA First of all, I wanted to join AA because it was happier. They were laughing Al-A-Nan was a bunch of little thin, you know, thin-lipped blue-haired cookie-baking bitches And that was not me. My God, I was young. You know, I see them coming in now and they look over at her. They say, what does she know? She's so old. I said, I may be old, but I was a motorcycle mama at the Christmas party. You know. I may have been a motorcycle mom. I may not be old but there's still fire here, you know. But anyhow, I went on and I kept going to the meetings and I got a sponsor, and the rest is history. My life changed because I had a guide, someone to tell me other than my You know the worst person you can take advice from? You. You know, when you run it past you, you're in trouble because I never fail to co-sign any thought I have. Everything is wonderful up here. Sometimes if I hear myself say it out loud, I hear it's crazy. And if not, I have someone that will say, that's crazy. And I go, really? Because it always sounds good to me. And the people say, well, how long do you, you know, how long have you? I said, I've had the same sponsor now over 25 years. And she knows me inside out. She knows how I think better than I know how I think. That is invaluable. Absolutely invaluable to have. And not only that, I grew up on the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I tell you, there's nothing that describes my illness better in any literature anywhere because I have the family disease of alcoholism. I do not have an allergy to alcohol, but I have all of the rest of the isms. Maybe you're not like me, but for me, that's where I found my solutions. And so I'm a big believer in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and the AA 12 and 12. We have good Al-Anon literature too. I will not discount our Al-Anon literature, but as far as the disease of alcoholism is concerned, why take something watered down when you can have the meat? I'm sorry. That's my thought. Opinion, you know. It's my opinion. I'm entitled to it. And now you're entitled to IT. Now, I'm old. I can get away with it now. No. My life changed, and I had to make a reconciliation with my mother. You know, that was the worst relationship I had. It wasn't the one with J.D., as damaged as that was. I hadn't hated him a lifetime. I had hated her a lifetime, and what I hated about her was she didn't love me, and the reason I thought my mother didn't like me or didn't want to love me was that she didn'T seem to accept me the way I was. I didn'T accept her the way she was, but that was okay. But I learned in here, anything you want, you've got to be willing to do. You have to put forth and do. So I was going to have to accept her like she was. And over a period of about five or six years, taking the actions that I was told to take, accepting her as she was, accepting her limitations, accepting the fact that she was a negative person, treating her like I would want to be treated, treating her Like a loving daughter would treat a mother. And I said, I don't know how to be a loving daughter. And they said, well, find someone who is. Find out how. And I started doing all those things I didn't want to do in order to get the result I wanted, which was that there be something between us besides this nyan-nyan-nyah that we had always had. And lo and behold, over a period of time, by consistently taking the action, God let me see me. I asked God to allow me to see Mother through His eyes. And that day, he allowed me to see me. And when I saw me, I saw that I went to my mother as a little child all my life because what I saw that day was my mother was short. She came up to hear on me and I didn't know that. Why not? Because I came as a middle child and when you're little, your mama's always big. And I came there looking for that approval from her. I would have called approval love. And I didn' t have that. No matter what I did, mother found what I didn't do. She always pointed out the negatives, never the positives. And so when I'd go to her, I'd go time and time again for approval, never getting it, leaving and hating her. And I saw I set myself up in that time after time after times. Mother was just being mother, but I was the one that stood in the freeway. Don't whine when you get run over by the truck. You know, you put yourself in that place. and then as I was walking to the back she was raking leaves God let me see my mother I saw my mother's heart it was full of scars it was not a heart that was so full of love that she was withholding love to punish me as I had perceived it was a heart that needed love who was going to have to bring love to this relationship I was because I was the one who had it where did I get it? y'all gave it to me Y'all loved me until I could love me, then I could love you. And I was going to have to take that to my mother I would never have thought it would have happened that way and as I consistently went back to her time after time giving her that hug that she didn't want, she was stiff and after a period of time she would stand up for that hug, she didn'T know how to hug you back, she DIDN'T know how to say I love you, but I could do those things. And lo and behold, came the day that my mother said to me, why were you such an ornery kid? And I said, because I was getting even with you for not loving me. And my mother said, what do you mean I didn't love you? I gave you a roof over your head. I gave you clothes to wear. I give you food to eat. It was more than I had. You see, my mother had been raised in the alcoholism. Her father had physically abused her. She had scars all over he left to cut people up with a knife she had scars all over her she had had appendicitis they had gone to the country doctor and they had operated on her and took her back home and he came in and kicked her in the side she nearly died from hemorrhaging to death that night and when she was 13 he came in and tried to rape her and she hit him in the head with a stick of stovewood and she walked all the way from Gleason Tennessee to Memphis which is hundreds of miles and she slept in culverts and stole food out of people's gardens to get there and lived in an alley. This was the early 1900s. Now, if you'd had to live like that, what would have been the greatest gift you could ever give a kid? My mother, there was a lady that owned a boarding house on that alley, and the lady was pregnant and she needed some help, and she told my mother that if she would work in there helping her, she'd give her room and board. and my mother worked in there and my daddy was the head of the recruiting office for the army and he took his meals at that boarding house and they met and when she was 16 they got married you see my mother gave the best she had and those were things that I took for granted for a lifetime never realizing to some people those things are luxuries having food having clothes having a roof over her head and it became enough it became enough and my mama looked at me and she said forgive me for not being the kind of mama you needed and I said mama I forgive you and my mother got up and she walked to me and she put her arms around me and she hugged me and she says baby I love you I've always loved you and I knew that she had and then my mother we had 3 or 4 really good years together and then my mother got a mental illness. And part of that mental illness is that you turn against those you love. And so I went through that and the mother had a series of strokes, was put in the nursing home and she knew my sister had put her in the nurse and she got mad at my sister and I became a good kid again. Who knows? I have lots of good memories of doing things with my mother because after that series of stroke my mother was more loving to me. She was able to be more demonstrative. she would hug me she would pat me on the face she would point to me and go like this she would do it because she couldn't speak her throat was paralyzed but my mother was able to show me and I have many many good memories of that and I am so grateful because you see now I'm in Mother Hell Part 2 with Dorothy and I know that I've got to make good memories now because this is progressive and I see each month, each year, Dorothy goes downhill. I see that and so I am trying to make the most of what God has between Dorothy and me for today. That's the benefits of being here and doing the deal and as a result I can tell you my name is Mary Pearl. I'm an Al-Anon who's happy joyous and free. Thank you. Applause