Passing Away

I hate writing about this. I really do.

I found out Saturday that someone in our recovery community passed away Friday night, probably from an overdose. It's very sad. She was a young person with a child. So she was someone's mother, someone's daughter, someone's sister, someone's partner, and a lot of folks' friend.
So how does this happen? Why does this happen?

I've been around death since I was 2 years old. I started walking at one of my grandfather's funeral. When I was 7, I saw my aunt dying from stomach cancer. Throughout the years, I've been to the funerals of relatives and friends. I've missed some, too - a very good friend of mine from college passed away in 1988. He was 28 years old. So I know that physical death is a part of life.

The ones that bother me are the ones who pass young. A classmate who was stabbed to death by her boyfriend when she was 19 or 20. My friend who passed over the weekend. A friend from Boy Scouts who was one of the nicest guys you'd want to know passed in service to his country. There's more.

I don't get into the hows and whys too very much - it's not healthy. It's dabbling in that which is not mine to dabble in. Otherwise I start telling God who should stay and who should go. I've done that before. The whole thing is a great big mystery to me.

Why am I alive today? I've had several overdoses, two of which put me in comas. I've punished myself more than anyone else possibly could have. Yet I'm here today, living, breathing, thriving, while people much better than me [judgment] have passed on. There isn't any logic in it at all.

Spiritually I know that death is sort of like moving out of state - we only cease to exist in this particular physical realm. How many realms are out there, I don't know. If one is a Christian, then they know the words of Jesus, who mentioned to His disciples that His Father's house has many mansions. This indicates that there are many different 'places' for us to exist.

I read a recent statistic that said that people with a chronic mental condition (and addiction is a mental health condition) typically have a life span 25 years less than those without mental health conditions. That's a lot less!

But here's the real deal: Sometimes, maybe often, wonderful people who are a real asset to this world and who are much loved and admired die much too soon [judgment]. As an alcoholic, I can faithfully say that it would be my own inaccurate perception of myself that would cause me to die from my disease. In other words, I view myself, even today, much more harshly than anybody else on the planet. The shame and self-hatred that I carried within me caused me to go back to using alcohol and to other self-destructive behaviors often. One day, who knows when, I began to doubt my own thinking, and I began to look at how others seemed to perceive me. Eventually, because I found myself surrounded by people who looked at me much better than I looked at myself, I began to believe their perceptions more than my own. I began to behave as if my life has value, because obviously it does to those who support me. And that, I believe, is really the only reason that I am alive today - I was able to listen to someone else's thinking more than my own. Let me tell you that that is not an easy task. There is nothing in the world that I placed more value on than my own thinking.

So I understand how my friend went back to the thinking that caused her to die. And I'm sad. I'm sad that she could not see what a special and beautiful human being and child of God she was. I'm sad that she had people who were really close to her who now have an empty space inside of them.

And what can I do? What will I do? I can honor her memory by staying sober and staying in recovery. I can do what others have done for me - I will continue to encourage, support, and love those who live with addiction/alcoholism and other mental health conditions. I will not turn my back on others because it's too hard to see someone die from this - I will continue to develop my understanding that God is in all of us, and continue to develop my skills in helping others discover this Truth for themselves. And I will continue to live and thrive and love my life and myself just as it is and I am today, if only to show others that it is possible to live in recovery. We don't have to die from this disease.

It's the least I can do.

Namaste,

Ken