“So, you’re still there?”
Again, I had so many sarcastic comments that I wanted to respond with. Of course I was still there; he had just called me and I answered the phone. But I kept my comments to myself and continued to try and have a decent conversation.
“I can send you guys some plane tickets if you’d like to come visit,” I started to say.
“We can’t. It’s busy here.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I’m glad you’re doing better,” Heath said, and I genuinely believed him. “So is Dad. He’s been talking about you a lot since you called.”
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“How’s he doing?”
“He’s old, Erik. I wish he could just retire, but he won’t. Keeps saying we’re too busy for him to quit. I tried to explain that I could hire someone to help, but you know how he is.”
I did know how my father was. He was a workaholic. Ever since our mother passed away, work was how our father dealt with his emotions. Instead of talking to anyone or working through his grief, he just worked. And working at a funeral home probably wasn’t the best job to have if you were trying to work through the grief of losing the love of your life.
“Yep, I know.”
“Are you staying there until the New Year?”
“Yep, I’ll be here probably until the end of January.”
“Do you think it will work on you?”
The question was an awkward one, like what I was doing at treatment would magically fix me. But my brother didn’t know about addiction and I certainly couldn’t blame him for wondering if I would be able to stay sober. If you didn’t struggle with addition, it was a mystifying disease.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to do everything I can to get better and stay better.”
“Group time,” Susan hollered about two inches away from me.
“I just wanted to call and tell you we were thinking of you and hope it works. Maybe when you’re all done, you can stop out here for a visit.”
“Sure, I think I can make that happen. You take care of yourself and take care of Dad, too.”
“Later,” Heath said as he hung up.
Talking to Heath wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as talking to my father. It had been a pretty damn good conversation, and I felt good about the possibility that we would be able to mend our broken family, at least a little bit.
I wasn’t delusional. I knew that we would never be the kind of family that sat down for Sunday dinners every week, but I wanted to be closer to them. I wanted them to understand the choices I had made weren’t about them at all. Every decision I had made was a selfish one and totally about myself and what I wanted.
Maybe it was wrong of me, but I couldn’t take it back. I couldn’t change the last ten years and they couldn’t change it, either. But maybe, if we worked at it, we could have a phone conversation with each other and not feel like we were talking to total strangers. I was starting to see that perhaps I had placed all the blame on my family and hadn’t appreciated my own role in the problems we were having.
“Get going to group, mister,” I heard Cassidy’s voice say from behind me.
“I thought you weren’t working?”
“I’m just here for a couple of hours. Get to group. You can’t be late if there are only six of you.”
As much as I wanted to stay there and talk with Cassidy, I knew she was right. I was dying to tell Jarrod and the others about my conversation with my brother. We had just been talking about our support systems the day before and I had said I didn’t have one at all. But in one single phone call, I saw the promise of a growing support system in the future.
It was weird how just a couple of weeks at the rehab center had already turned my mind around. I could see the good in things so much easier than I had been before I arrived. Maybe it was because I was sober, or maybe because I had actually been going to groups and meeting with my therapist, but I felt great.
Feeling good was something so foreign to me that I found myself second guessing my own mood constantly. Even as I talked with Cassidy and then went to my group session, there was energy about my walk that I hadn’t noticed before.
Being clear headed and energized was a great feeling and brought me back to my college days. I had been so focused on engineering new technology, I had endless energy and almost always was in a positive mood.