HERE’S TO YOUR HEALTH
This week’s HTYH, is a continuation of Keith L.’s story: I can never forget a more difficult amends that I had to make; it was to my brother Jerry. Jerry was dieing from untreated alcoholism and he was living exactly like I was before I found A.A., but I could never find him on my frequent trips back home.
It must be difficult having a sober brother when you’re a practicing alcoholic but he always made himself hard to find. When my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary he was there, but I didn’t have much of a chance to talk with him because the Alanon members in my family surrounded him.
A few months later my mother called and said, “Your brother Jerry is in the hospital and he has lung cancer.” I drove there to see him and when I got there he asked his older brother, a profound question, he said, “Do you really believe there is a God?” I said, “Jerry, I know there’s a God, more than anything else in this world!” Then Jerry asked a question that I once asked, “Do you think God cares about a person like me?” I said, “Jerry, God did everything for us. He never turns his back on us. We are the ones who turn our back on Him.
I longed to do something for Jerry and I brought an extra Rosary with me. I asked Jerry if I could do something for him, I said, “Can I hug you?” Even though he was very frail, he got out of bed and we hugged each other. Jerry was a boxer in his younger days and he was good one, but he was trembling as we hugged. I helped him back into bed and he said to me, “I think I can be like you and stop drinking.” I said, “Jerry, I know you can and if I can help you do that, let me know.”
While I was driving back to North Carolina, I remembered something that I learned in theology. There are two kinds of time. There’s chronos that has to do with chronological time and there’s tyros, which is God’s time and the A.A. old-timers always told me that God’s time is “Right Now!” WE can remember God from the past and we can pray to God about the future, but we can only know Him in the present.
In chronological time, I only hugged my brother for a minute, but in God’s time I hugged him forever and to this day he still lives in my heart. Jerry died the way I want to die, he made amends to his family the best way he could. And the day after my 20th A.A. anniversary, our mother walked into his room, and found him sitting peacefully in a chair with the Rosary in his hand that I had given him; when he passed away; he was talking to God.
Jerry was clean, sober and talking to God when he died and that’s the way I want to go. To be continued…
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