Living Together Again

It's amazing how great it felt to be living together again. The two halfs were now whole. Our lives had always been intertwined, even when things were going bad it's like we always had that connection. I was always Bob's life support his floating device sort of. Now we could get on with the process of living a healthy sober life.

People wondered how I could just jump into a marriage with a man that for the past five previous years could not stay sober, but I just knew to the core of my soul that this time was differant. If you knew Bob as well as I did you would know that I saw it in his eyes. This disease had taken him to his bottom, a real bottom. He was changed by this experience to the core of his soul. We were both grateful that he had survived everything he had been through. Bob would always say that he knew that God had a plan for him, he just didn't think he saved him for no reason. That would come to pass later.

As soon as we left Wisconsin we came back home and began figuring out what we were going to do with the rest of our lives.
First thing Bob did was start connecting with AA again. He found a little meeting just two blocks from our apartment and began a commitment to set up the meeting once a weekk there. Then he signed up for some acting classes at the Strausberg Institute and began a dream of his, he always wanted to act, instead of real life drama, the stage now was going to be a place for him.
The first thing he did was shave off his beard and his mustache. I could not believe just how young and hansome he looked without it. He never grew a beard back again.

Life was so good, we were living in our honeymoon phase.

My brother and his wife came to visit us two months later and his dad offered to let us all stay at his Palm Springs house. It was so much fun. There was a full time housekeeper and her husband living there and they took really good care of us.
We played tennis, swam and had all our meals prepared. I was so grateful for this. It showed Bob and me that his dad trusted him again. It meant so much more to us than he would ever know. This act just reinforced Bob's sobriety. His family was mending. It was the most important step in our new life together. TRUST

Meeting my Family

After Christmas we flew back to Bob's apartment in Kansas with the future looking so exciting. We would drive to Wisconsin so Bob could finally meet my family and from there it was on to Colorado to find a new city to live. After seeing his daughter before we left the other mission he was on was to retrieve my engagement ring which I didn't know that he had given to his cousin to safeguard for him. I guess deep down in his soul, he had known that we would be together some day and he didn't want it around or he may have sold it. I was deeply moved by that.

We weren't sure where we would end up we just thought maybe a quiet ski town would suit us just fine.

Kansas in January was surprisingly free from snow, but it was cold out. We decided to go to the local mall and hang out, there wasn't really much to do there in Topeka. We were literally two of five people at the Macy's store that night. The place was eerily empty.

We wandered around and bought Bob a new jacket because he was really freezing without a warm coat. After we grabbed a bit to eat at the food court we decided it was time to go back to his apartment and get ready to leave on our road trip.

We walked outside to where we thought we parked his "Jeep", it wasn't there. Now Bob did have short term memory issues and I wasn't paying attention to where we parked. We could not find the car. How could you not see a bright orange Jeep in an almost empty parking lot. It was surreal. The car vanished.

Here we were in the middle of nowhere and his car got "jacked" unbelievable. We called the police and alerted the security from the mall, The car was gone without a trace. Until today there has never been any information on that car.

We later found out from the police that there was a very active car jacking ring in the area and the take them and send them off to a chop shop before you can bat an eye.

Knock on wood, I have lived in Los Angeles and have had radios stolen but that's it. Imagine being out in the "Heartland" and this happens.

We both looked at it as a sign that we were not supposed to drive to Colorado or live there as a matter of fact. So the old saying goes "We make plans and God laughs". We had to come up with a plan B. We still went to have Bob meet my family but we flew instead. We arranged for all Bob's things to be shipped to my apartment and we mad plans to leave Kansas for good. I had called my oldest brother and he told me that we could stay at his house. We flew into Milwaukee and he picked us up. His three kids no longer lived at home and they had plenty of room. Or so I thought.

When he picked us up at the airport everyone was really happy to see me and meet Bob, or so I thought. My brother took us from the airport to my mother's one bedroom apartment. I thought he was taking us there so she could meet Bob. I was wrong. When he arrived he took the luggage out of the trunk and brought it into her apartment. He never explained why he changed his mind about us staying there. Not one word was said about it. I think it was because Bob was a Jew.
The only reason we even were invited to his house during our stay there was so that I could give his wife a perm. They didn't invite us for dinner or anything. I will never forget the rudeness of that.

My other brother Richard on the other hand, opened his home to us so graciously. He loaned us a car, and had us come over for a really special dinner which he went out of his way to make Bob feel at home. It was so funny because Bob's father was from Poland and there is a really large Polish population in Milwaukee, where I'm from and he had prepared some special Polish Sausage for us. Bob had never tasted Polish sausage before in his life. It was so funny but Bob never told that to Richard or his wife until after dinner. Actually it was really good.

The kindness that Richard and his wife showed us during our stay bonded them together for life. They remained close from that day forward. Bob did not get to meet my third brother, they were living out of town someplace else at that time.

While we were there we ended up having a really nice time with my Mom. She was getting pretty forgetful and would call Bob
Ernie, his real name is Bernard anyway she really liked him a lot. He had that effect on everyone.

We were really keeping up our AA meetings and everything. I will never forget going to one down by the LakeFront. I never knew there was AA so active and alive in my home town. I shouldn't have been surprised, after all the local pastime is drinking. There is a beer bar on every corner. It's one of the reasons that in the beginning Bob's telling me he was an Alcoholic didn't scare me. Hell everyone in that town seemed like they were one once I started going out as a teenager. We had beer bars we could drink in at 18 back then. It didn't seem unusual.

I just happened to be blessed, even when I was sneaking into the bars before I was 18, I was only there to dance and drink Cokes. That was my passion, still is as a matter of fact.

After Five days we headed back to my apartment in L.A. Now Bob no longer had a car to his name, but we knew we would manage, we always did land on our feet when we had to. We just shared my car, it wasn't even a problem. I had quit my job, thinking that I was moving away, so we were pretty much on the same schedule. Bob started taking acting classes at the Lee Strasbourg Institute and I started doing my clients that were left back home as they had been doing before I left. There wasn't any glitches everything was running smooth or so it seemed.

I was still hanging out with all my former AA friends who had really been there for me during all the chaos. It was a good environment for Bob also, all my friends were sober in the program. No temptation. He immediately started being the secretary of a small meeting right across the street from our apartment so he wasn't really stranded too much without a car if I had someplace to go, he could just walk.

One night I went out to dinner with one of my female friends from the program and things seemed really strained between us that night. I couldn't figure out why she was so distant and acting weird. I finally got it. She was really happy for me when my life was falling apart and I was miserable. Now that I was happy, she wasn't happy for me. It was like a light going off in my head, I just got it. So I told her what I was feeling. She actually didn't deny it, and I never hung out with her again.

It's funny but some people only like you when your down lower than they are. I learned that the hard way. All in all it didn't matter to me, I didn't care what anyone thought about me getting married to Bob. It didn't matter that we had just been through five years in and out of rehabs and hell. I loved him, he loved me, and we made a commitment to make it work.

I knew we would have bumps in the road but who doesn't. Our love had passed the test of time, now all we needed was to clock the days, months and hopefully years of sobriety, together.

Back to LA

The days in Aspen went by all to quickly and before we knew it, I was on a plane back to Los Angeles and he was on one back to Kansas.
Bob had made several commitments to his Legal Aid people and the play was still running. He would finish out his commitments, and be home for Christmas.
His Doctor was freaking out. What had we done he kept asking Bob. It was bad enough that he went and got married at only four months of sobriety, but moving back to L.A. was as good as sealing his death warrant, he said.

Bob never was one to listen to his doctors advice and maybe the best thing that happened to Bob was his doctor's doom and gloom speech he gave him. It was a challenge for Bob. He just loved proving the "shrinks" wrong. Years before a psychiatrist had told him he would never get sober. Bob was determined to proved him wrong. Several years later we ran into this man at the market, I just loved the look of "You don't know Me you were wrong" on Bob's face when he spoke to him proud to have proved him wrong.

Bob was coming home for the holidays and we had made a commitment that we would leave Los Angeles and move to Colorado someplace. We did not want to find out if the doctor's prediction would come true. As long as we were together we knew we would be happy. I waited with baited breath for his return. He was also so excited he had not seen his daughter since the summer. She missed him too.

Before Bob returned his Dad and Brother took me out for a wonderful dinner at a really amazing new restaurant in town. The chef was Wolfgang Puck, before he owned his own restaurants. They could not have been more wonderful. I felt really lucky to be a part of his family. My spirits were high and I felt blessed. Years later his brother told me that no one ever really thought that we would last as many years as we did. What were the odds of two people meeting in a bar while Bob's full blown Alcoholism was rearing it's ugly head. There was no rhyme nor reason to love and destiny I guess.

It was the longest month I had had in a long time, but the day finally arrived and Bob was home. It definitely was our "HoneyMoon" period. Everything was great.

After Christmas I quit my job at the salon I was working at, we made plans to go back to Kansas pack up his place hop in the car and drive to Wisconsin to introduce Bob to my family and then go on to Colorado and find a new place to live.

We were very excited about our future. The only thing was that Bob was very sad that he would be moving so far away from his daughter, but it was better for her that he was sane and sober and living someplace safe so he could be the father he wanted to be to her.

"Splender In the Grass"

The movie we watched that night was "Slender in the Grass" with Natalie Wood and Warren Beaty. A classic. As the movie got close to the end I swear it was like a lightning bolt came down crashing on my head.

There's a scene in the movie where Natalie Wood's character gets out of a mental hospital and goes to see the "Love of her Life".
She tracked down Warren Beaty's character only to find that once handsome love of her life, married to a now very pregnant woman and he walked into the house filthy from working in the field of his farm.

She looked at him and knew she would never be with him again. It was like someone was talking directly to me. I knew that if I left Bob in Kansas, I would never be with him again. His doctors told him he could never go back there if he wanted to live.

I did the only thing I could think of, I asked Bob if he wanted to get "MARRIED". He was stunned. He asked me if I was serious and who could blame him. I told him that I was never more serious. He told me that he loved me and it would be his honor.
We went to sleep that night and Bob woke me up really early the next morning. The first thing he did was ask me if I had changed my mind yet. He was adorable. He had grown accustomed to me rejecting his marriage proposals and he just wanted to be sure. I told him that I had not changed my mind, I wanted to marry him.

He got the yellow pages out and we tracked down a "Justice of the Peace" in Olatha Kansas that would marry us without the three day waiting period or blood tests. We got dressed, had breakfast, went and bought two gold wedding bands and found a cab to the court house. Judge Walton married us and his secretary was our only witness.

I got married in a purple fringe jacket and purple cords. It was the happiest day of my life. We went back to our hotel and called our families. Now in our excitement we never thought for one moment that our families probably thought we were both crazy. They all were so gracious. After all we had known each other for over five years it certainly wasn't two strangers eloping. The only person who openly told us the truth was his doctor. He was appalled. It was his plan that Bob never go back to L.A. and he didn't even know I was coming to visit, let alone marry Bob.

We had a remarkable dinner at the Hotel restaurant. I will never forget it. "The Peppercorn Duck Club" was the name of it.
We dined on Chateaubriand and for dessert there was this amazing chocolate bar. Ice cream with all the toppings that you could imagine. It was romantic. Just the two of us madly in love without a care in the world or a plan for that matter.

The following morning Bob decided we needed to go on a Honeymoon. I only had three days left before I had to go back to Los Angeles. We flew to Aspen Colorado. I had never been there. It was a winter wonderland. We spent our honeymoon there and celebrated Thanksgiving at the same time.
No two people have ever felt more grateful to be together. Bob told me a story of a nun who had given him a copy of the book of "Job" to read. The story had quite an impact on his life. It was that book that made the biggest difference in our lives. He told me the story of Job and that he prayed everyday to just please help him stay sober and he prayed that someday he would have a second chance at a family. Perhaps a son to take to the ball games with. The hospital had taken him to games while he was there and it had impacted him so greatly it was all he prayed for. Sobriety for a second chance at a sober new family life. He could never mend his first marriage and he just adored his daughter, but the damage had already been done. She was pretty much "Lost" to him in the sense that a weekend father would never fill the hole in his gut.

I had watched him for years cry rivers of tears over the loss of being a full time father. He desperately wanted a second change. God was going to answer his prayers. He had just answered the first one. He had been convinced that I was no longer an option. He had to move on and get over me. I had tried the same thing. It's funny how destiny took charge.
We were destined to be together. There was no question about that. Most people could have never survived our first five years together and still even talk to one another. This man was my soul mate there wasn't anything that would tear us apart.
Bound by love and destiny. An epic love story unfolding before our very eyes. We just climbed on board and let the gods above show us our future one day at a time.
The Beautiful tortured soul that I had grown to love so completely was healing from the inside out. I thanked my god in heaven that he had given me the ability to see the beautiful soul that was inside this man. I had never known anyone as smart, kind and simply mesmerizing as he was. I had also never known anyone so completely out of control and on a crash course to hell as he had been.

Hopefully that part of our lives was behind us now. It was not a choice, I told Bob I was only staying married to him thru sobriety only. I could never repeat any of the past out of control years. I was in it only thru sobriety. It was enough for him a bargain was struck between us. We both put the past behind us and enthusiastically embraced our new marriage and his sobriety.

Rebuilding

I spoke to Bob everyday after that miraculous phone call. It was the end of October and I had been planning a trip to Mexico with a mutual friend of ours from AA. Her father was producing a movie in Mexico and I had my tickets purchased to go with her there during the Thanksgiving Holiday.

The more I spoke with Bob, the more I missed him. I decided that Mexico could wait. I already had the time off from work and an airline ticket. I changed my plans. I flew to Kansas to see him.
I had an agenda. I was either going to never see him again or I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. Depending on that little voice in my head and the feeling in my gut.

The day I arrived in Kansas was a day I will never forget. I got off the plane and walked into this small terminal and there was the most handsome face I had ever seen. The face of the man I adored. I ran to him. It really was a scene out of a movie.
There we were, movie star gorgeous, the both of us looking so L.A. for being out in Kansas. People were starring at us and we didn't see them. It was quite a re-union. The last time I saw him I was giving him back his diamond engagement ring he had given me and he was in terrible shape that day. I thought I would never see him again that day and here he was.

I had a purple fringed jacket on and he had a plaid shirt on. He didn't even have a leather jacket left to his name. There was something really different about him a serenity that I had never seen in him before. He was calm, quiet and at peace in his own skin. I don't know any other way to describe him. I liked the new improved Bob. I hadn't felt safe or calm in his presence for many years. I was always walking on egg shells around him. Even when he was "Dry" he was never "Sober". I didn't know him sober it was like someone else had invaded his body. I liked this feeling of security. I was home. I was where I was meant to be. I saw all my hopes and dreams in his eyes. My agenda was confirmed. I was not going to let him go again.

We got my luggage and drove to his apartment. On the way there he told me about the court case he had gone thru. The judge was so impressed with his progress he suspended his sentence. Bob was a free man. He had been doing some "Pro- Bono" work for the Legal Aid offices during the day and at night he was the "Prop Master" at a local Play House. He was going to noon meetings and keeping in contact with his doctor. I had not seen a productive Bob the entire five years before this. To say I was impressed was an understatement.

Bob decided to take me to Kansas City for the weekend. There was a Hyatt Hotel that had collapsed several years back and now it was rebuilt and the rooms were beyond cheap. They couldn't give them away. So for $35 a night we got a great room. We hopped on a Grey Hound Bus the next morning and headed for Kansas City. Neither of us had ever been there before so we were excited.

We walked around town, had a great Italian Dinner, went out to a night club, which did make me uncomfortable, but I didn't tell him and I was glad I didn't because we ended up having an amazing night.
He told me that the Hospital Doctor told him if he went back to Los Angeles to live he would more than likely relapse and die. They had diagnosed him with the beginning of "Wet Brain" He had done so much heavy drinking he had caused severe damage to his brain. The other part of his brain would compensate for the damaged part but it would never regenerate. Bob was 33 years old and he had caused major damage to himself.

"Wet Brain" is the condition that many skid row drunks have. You see them walking funny and talking to themselves not to mention severe memory loss. Something that would affect him the rest of his life. This condition was one of the conditions which helped to put a damper on his relationship with his daughter. She always thought he didn't pay any attention to her when she talked to him, the truth was he had a really severe case of short term memory loss. A condition we confirmed by a specialist in Beverly Hills when he started getting bad headaches years later.

He was determined to keep this condition from his daughter and his family. They never really discussed it. Many years later I told his daughter about his condition trying to let her know it wasn't her, he just couldn't help it. It was a permanent condition caused by abuse.

I fell in love all over again that night. The time we spent together just flew by. I didn't want it to ever end. I was HAPPY something I hadn't been for a long time.

For many years Bob had asked me to marry him, and my answer was always the same. "SOMEDAY" it was all I could ever say. I was never in the frame of mind to accept his proposal so he just stopped asking me. Even thou we had been engaged, it was more of a commitment to not see other people than to get married. He was never in the condition to get married and I wasn't that crazy to marry someone who could be such a Jeykle and Hyde personality at any given moment.

All I wanted to do was just enjoy our brief time together and not worry about anything. That was until we went up to our room and watched the Movie that forever changed our lives.

The months go by

Bob got to Hazleton in August and I rarely heard from him during his stay there. When he arrived he was "Engaged" to a former call girl or whatever she was. They obviously were never serious especially after they took the trip to Tahiti and things went from bad to worse for Bob's health when she was sneaking vodka into his hospital room.

I'm sure the doctors had Bob trying to sort out all the chaos he had created from his last slip. I do know that he had counted on her to help get all his things out of the house he rented in Studio City after he had trashed it. Of course the one thing you can always count on with the element that he had been associating with is that they could not be trusted. So one day I did get a call from him asking if I could please contact this woman and see if I could get his paintings back from her. She had shipped him his clothes minus all his valuable leather jackets and of course the artwork was also not included. When I finally did reach her she was arrogant and flippant. She told me to mind my own business and not bother her again. Bob's first wife also had spoken to her and tried to reason with her to just give back the paintings. She was not successful either. So that was a lesson he had learned.

It was part of the consequences of his drinking and using. He tended to loose everything he owed of any value but this time he was lucky that he got out with his life, thats how far gone he was when he got there.

So the months seemed to fly by and his birthday, October 27th, came and went. I tried to call him at the hospital to wish him a happy birthday and they told me he had been released. I felt a knife stab deep in my gut. I tried calling information and there was no listing for him. I felt a deep loss and was convinced that I would probably never hear from him again. The last time I spoke to him he asked me if I was seeing anyone and I told him that I was. Actually I was just dating, but I did not want to open a door to enable him again so I was very sure to let him know that things were not the same between us after all he did get "engaged" to someone else during the previous months and I felt it was best to let things remain as they were.
I was just trying to be strong to not cave in, I had to let him go. When we got off the phone I just broke down and sobbed. It didn't matter that I was sitting at my desk at work. I was so heart broken but it was important to be strong, for the both of us if we were ever going to get well. Either one of us. We had to learn how to not be in love or together.

A funny thing happens when you put that much thought and energy into someone you care about, they contact you or you just "Happen" to run into them someplace. And sure enough one morning around 7:30 the phone rang, it was Bob. I couldn't believe it. All I could say to him was how happy I was to hear from him. I told him I had been trying to call him on his birthday and could not find him. I felt so relieved just to hear his voice. A sense of wholeness engulfed my entire body. The missing link to my happiness was in place. I just threw caution to the wind. No more being strong or tough. I just had to be honest. There were no games going to be played this time. I loved this man and he needed to know that there was one person besides his dad that could love him and forgive him unconditionally.
He had been sober for four months this time. One of the longest stretches of sobriety he had reached in severall years. I was overcome with a renewed sense of hope. Genuine hope. Bob had bottomed out. He had lost everthing, including his digity when he was living in the desert. He was sincere about rebuilding his life. I heard it in his voice, I felt it in my body. It was different this time.

So started the beginning of the rest of my life.

Scared Straight

It's amazing how much fear motivates a person. The fear of losing his freedom catapulted Bob into some serious commitment to getting and staying sober. This was not uncommon for Bob when first entering any recovery place he was always serious about getting well. The problem was that he had been to over 20 some rehabs by this time and the longer he was there or at any place for that matter, the more his restlessness took over. At some point he just wanted to get out and would really stop paying attention to the couselors. But this place didn't have "Counselors" it had shinks.

One day his new Doctor called me. As he started telling me of Bob's good attitude and co-operation I laid it out for him. Bob was one of the smartest people I had ever known in my life. He had figured out what to say years ago to get the staff off his back. He was so charming and sounded so sincere and convincing. I told the doctor that if he really wanted to help Bob he could not let him get away with anything. He was capable of telling him exactly what the doctor wanted to hear. He was an expert at going to Rehab.

The Doctor took my advice and the next time I did talk to Bob he told me how they were really on his case and if he didn't do everything the wanted he was going to jail.

Mission accomplished. Bob was scared straight. He did everything he was told to do and maybe for the first time in a long time he told the truth to someone.

I'm sure it was very painful for him to face the pain he had put his family thru and I was stunned when I got a call from his Dad asking my opinion of what I thought about his going to see Bob in Kansas. I couldn't believe he was thinking of going. I of course told him that I knew he had to go. It was a good thing hopefully for the both of them. Hopefully there would be some healing for the two of them.

His father had always been there for him, but he had never gone to visit him in any of the many places since I knew Bob in the past five years. The fact that his Dad was going was major. Now Bob couldn't blame his father any longer as he used to go on and on about how noone in the family ever came to see him. He used it as an excuse to drink. One more excuse was stripped away from him.

Bob would be left facing his demons and the truth, no matter how painful it was for him.

As they say in the AA program, speak the truth and the truth will set you free. It was all starting.

Thoughts

I find that sitting here writing about all the things that happened to Bob I have failed to really include the rollercoaster ride that I was taking at the same time.
How does one justify living in a totally out of control environment? What does that say about me? Several things come to mind, but I think the most obvious is that I simply loved and adored a really sick man. I haven't said much about the sober times, but you should know that those were the times that kept me hanging in there, hoping that one of these times a "CURE" could be found.

Of course I didn't understand then as I do now, that there is no cure for this disease, just simply not picking up that first drink, which by all my witnessing, first hand, was a lot harder than it sounds, especially for Bob.

But during those times when he was not drinking we lived a life that few people will ever know. I loved him to the core of my being and I believe he loved me the same way. How many people ever really and truly experience that kind of love.

We used to compare ourselves to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Like them inspite of all the fighting, relapse and argument's, there was a bond between us that would never be broken. This disease is not for the faint of heart. It takes it out of you. It will drag you down into the deepest caverns of despair and then suddenly lift you high into Euphoric States of excitement and renewed hope when "normalcy" returns. It's like having a honeymoon time over and over again.

It's funny, but I never ever gave up the idea that one day Bob would loose the craving to pick up that first drink. Silly me, but I could not face a life with him if I didn't believe in his sincere desire to be rid of the demon that had a hold on his soul.
Every single time he got sober again, I seemed to have this renewed belief in his ability to "make it" this time.
I really have lost count of the times I said that to my family and myself.
I simply wanted to believe that every time he got sober he would stay sober. I just knew he could. I knew it.

We would spend all those times being such a normal couple. We shared a passion for movies, we both loved taking his daughter places, we wanted to be a happy little family, and during those times we were. The ideal couple, so in love as we were. I was devoted to his every wish, I never wanted to not be there for him.

Having said that, I was also now fully imersessed in AlAnon and it's "tough love" philosophy.
One time we went to a really large AA conference in Palm Springs with all our AA friends and a speaker actually told me that if I continued too "Help" him the way I had been, I might as well just hand him a gun myself, because in her opinion, I was killing him as much as he was killing himself.
That shook me to the core of my soul. How could she I thought. What a terrible thing to say to someone. Little did I know that she was right.
I had to learn the hard way, that one of the things Bob loved about me the most was the fact that I was a World Class Enabler.
Hell, I still would be if he were here today.
I struggled with that one. I would almost have to restrain myself to not be there for him. It just simply got to the point where I would have to unplug my phones so that I wouldn't be tempted to go and break him out of another rehab or nurse him back to health after getting so sick from drinking.

I didn't know how to say no. I couldn't do it. I just learned to not here the question. But the moment that call came in that he was ready to go somewhere, anywhere to get sober again, he knew I would always be there to help him get there no matter what it took and I guess the fact that I with the help of his dad and the attorney, really did go to any length the help him. And just wait until you read the reward that I got for just being there one last time.

When that last call came in for help I hadn't even seen him for at least two or three months, but I somehow knew it was coming, I always knew.

Not so Fast

Of course nothing was ever easy as I knew. I was just holding my breath hoping that he would make it to Salt Lake City.
We had arranged a hotel room for him to stay in that night and the attorney gave him permission to charge dinner and toiletries to the room and of course of pack of cigarettes.

He called me when he checked in. The first part of the trip to Kansas was over. He just needed to stay sober for one more night and catch the flight from Salt Lake to Kansas City. I felt relieved that his trip this far went off without any problems. Maybe he really was serious about getting sober. At least he was calling and saying he was. He called to say good night and told me he was very grateful to have a place to go. It must have been very traumatic sleeping in the desert. So traumatic that it seemed he was willing to do whatever it took to get help this time.
I know from being with him for years that he was most likely very sick at the moment. Otherwise he would not be so willing.
Of course he didn't want to alarm me and tried to make it sound like he was in fairly decent shape, I really knew better.

The next morning he got on a plane to Kansas and again the Attorney made arrangements for him to stay in a hotel for a couple of days. The Menenger Foundation did not have the facility to detox patients, he would have to do that himself. They would not admit him until he was sober for at least five days. This was day two. I was worried because this was a critical time for him.
If he was as sick as I knew he could be, he would go into some sort of bad withdrawal and all he would want was a drink to calm his shakes.

This hotel would not let him charge anything to the room but they were willing to accept an additional charge of $10 and they would give him the money to get some more cigarettes. He always chain smoked but even more when he was detoxing.
I didn't give it another thought. Kansas was a dry State and I didn't have anything to worry about.

Little did I know at the time that he would take that $10, find a "Club" that would sell bottles of alcohol and be off and running again.

I called his room before I went to sleep that night, because I had not heard from him. I started to worry. This was not a good sign. I just had this gut feeling that something was wrong. I barely slept that night.
The following morning I called his hotel again, no answer. I called the desk, they said they had not seen him.
What went through my mind was that he was dead. I thought his withdrawal had been so bad that his heart gave out on him.
I was freaking out.
I called the Menenger Foundation and told them what I was worried about. He was simply gone. The admissions people told me not to worry, they would track him down and find out what had happened to him. They told me to just stay calm, they would find him.

Several hours went by and I finally got a call. Bob was in the Kansas City Jail, and was awaiting sentencing for trying to force his way into a local hospital. He caused such a scene that they had him arrested. That's how sick he was. He hated hospitals with a passion and now he was trying to get himself admitted into one. That was a good sign but he just didn't go about it the right was. The staff called the cops on him.
This was Kansas, not Los Angeles. When he went before the Judge the Judge sentenced him to Menengers, it was no longer voluntary. He had to return to see the judge in two months and at that time he would let Bob know if he was going to lock him away in the State Mental Facility. It wasn't like California, where you could get out in 72 hours. If the Judge wanted to he could lock him in there and throw away the key. It was his discretion. He warned Bob that if he heard one bad report from the doctors at Menengers, that would be the end of his freedom. Bob was scared. More scared than he had ever been.
He was sent back to his jail cell. He was not sober enough to be admitted to the Treatment Center. This place was not really a treatment center for drugs or alcohol. It was a mental hospital that he was waiting to get in to Not the re=hab places that he was used to. This would be an totally different Journey. This time they were going to try and get to the bottom of why he just kept going back to the bottle. Nothing had worked for him so far.

He had tried everything conventional and still he would pick up that first drink. It was as confusing for him as for anyone.
This time, this place was going to approach things from an entirerly new direction. But now there was the added kicker of the Judge doing the decision making.

He could not afford to take this lightly. His freedom was virtually in the hands of some Judge in Kansas that could have cared less about his past history of trying to get and stay sober. He wanted results this time or he was just going to lock him up as a menace to Society for as long as he felt was necessary, even if it meant years.

Need I say Bob was just about to get "SCARED STRAIGHT'.

The Real Bottom

It had been years now, to be exact almost four and a half years of knowing him. He had lived through so many near death traumas it was hard to keep us with all the terrible things that had happened to him.
His heart had stopped once and he had to have the paddles put on him to bring him back. Guns pointed at his head, a knives cut near his eye, slashed wrists, walking on balconeys three stories high and who knows what I don't know. I guess it was never his time.
I had never known anyone who courted death as he did. Whether he was aware of it or not, to me the man had a death wish, I know he wasn't crazy, he had been in enough therapy in all the 31 programs over the years to know that for sure. He just hated being an alcoholic. To him it was a humiliation and he knew it humiliated his family too.

One day I recieved a call from his dad at work. He was leaving for Maui, but before he went he had made arrangements for his attorney to have the power of attorney in Bob's case. His dad knew that Bob was in serious trouble now, so he covered him before he left town. His dad knew that if Bob would ask for any kind of help it would come from a call to me. I told him that if I did hear from Bob I would do everything I could to get him into a hospital. He had arranged for a long term hospitala in Kansas to admit him. the only thing was, they would not detox him, he had to enter completely sober. I had no idea if Bob would even call me for help I thought he still was with the "Girlfriend". But I gave his dad my word. I would do whatever I could should I hear from him. It was Friday and of course I had the weekend off.

Late on Monday afternoon, I got a call from Bob. I could not believe it. It must have been some sort of connection that we always had that he knew I would always be there to help him when he was ready to get sober. I asked him how he was.
The story he told me seemed impossible.

Bob was living in the desert near Reno, under a bush. He told me about how he trashed his house when he thought that he was being followed and that he had spent several days in his closet sure that he was being watched. He explained in detail how he kicked out the sliding glass doors and overturned all his furniture looking for whomever it was that was following him. He told me he sold his car took the money and hopped on a bus to Reno to get away from this person.

Of course it was all paranoid delusion from the substances that he had been using. None of it was real. I asked him what happened to all his stuff and he said the girlfriend was going to pack it up for him.

I told him I had spoke to his Dad and I wanted to know what his plans were. He told me he wanted help. Thats all I needed to hear. I asked him if he had any money and he said he did not. I asked him what he did have, anything that could get him to an airport. He told me he had a bus ticket to Salt Lake City. I told him to get on it and call me when he got there.
I hung up and called the attorney.

We were on the road to recovery. Thank God.

New Lows

The doctors could not understand why they could not stop the staff infection from spreading. They were giving him massive amounts of anti biotics but still nothing was stopping it. Then a nurse found a bottle of vodka that his new "girlfriend" was sneaking into his room. They immediately banned her from going to see him.

Talking to him on the phone knowing how close to loosing his leg made me more aware of just how advanced his disease had taken him. He was being given so much morphine along with the antibiotics that he actually said he didn't care if he lost his leg. He liked the feeling of being on the morphine. Even many years later he was still telling my roommate this same story.
This is just one little example of how his life was reeling out of control before my very eyes and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

When they finally released him from the hospital, he was now craving morphine. His "girlfriend" had some pretty questionable acquaintances and one night she introduced him to what he called an "Israeli Mob Guy" He was looking for drugs and this man thought he was an undercover policeman. They got into an argument and this guy pulled out a gun and pointed it at Bob's head.
Bob told him to go ahead and shoot him, he would be doing him a favor. The man put his gun down and Bob said he told him he was a crazy Mother Fucker and couldn't be a cop. Bob simply had a Death Wish. It would even show up in his sobriety. He wasn't afraid of dying and put himself in many terrible situations. I thought the man had nine lives.
Bob wore that story on his sleeve for years like a badge of honor. That's how sick he was. That isn't something to brag about in my world. For some reason all these horrible things that happened to him made his"Story" seem all the more interesting to him.
There were times when he was sober in AA that he would comment on what "light weight" some of the speaker's stories were.
He had a tale to tell that was better than theirs. He loved the drama in fact it was as much a part of his addiction and the substance abuse was. He was a total adrenaline junkie. Even starting a fight, he would get his endorphine rush that he was seeking for some type of relief.

This was the beginning of his paranoid phase. Whatever he was taking had pushed him into full blown paranoid delusion.
He started driving around with a baseball bat in his car. One night one of his former friends from the program who was now also drinking again, went out and got into some sort of fight with a guy in a truck. They smashed his windshiel with the bat and then just took off. I got the call from Don that night telling me how out of control Bob's behavior was becomming.
He no longer wanted to hang out with him either.
I wondered what I was supposed to do about it. I was no longer his girlfriend I told Don. It seemed Don didn't approve of her either. Don got sober again right after that incident and stopped hanging out with Bob.
Bob was now pretty much alone most of the time except when someone delivered whatever it was he was taking.

Left on his own his delusions got stronger and stronger. He was convinced someone was after him. Even his cousin who was always trying to be there for him, bailed out. He was simply to far gone to socialize with.
I don't remember if Bob called me or someone else called but one night the call came. Bob had kicked out all the glass doors in his house broke all the furniture, and had to be rushed into the hospital for surgery. The plate glass doors had severed his leg pretty bad and he needed surgery and plastic surgery to save it.

Bob had gone over the deep end. The Bob everyone knew and loved was gone. I had no idea who was in his skin, but it wasn't Bob.

I did not hear from him again for at least a month when he did call it was not good. He was living in the dessert under a bush.

Disappointment's in the Air

It was the roller-coaster ride I simply could not get off of. Just when things were going great all hell would break loose. The only good thing was that this time around we had separate places to live so that I was not in the eye of the Storm.

By this time Bob's roommate was hiding that he was back on some sort of drugs, he was not paying rent, stealing Bob's clothes. Bob wanted him gone. I'm not sure how long it took to get him out because I wasn't around much during this time again.

I was working two jobs to pay my rent and car payments, I didn't really have much time to dwell on the horrors that must have been taking place in his world.
When I wasn't working I was hanging out with our Sober friends and staying really close to the group. At least I wasn't alone in this next relapse. I was being coached the entire time to just not interfere and let it take it's course. It's a very hard thing to do I must tell you. Especially when I knew the nature of his disease. The outlook was always worse and worse.

The only thing Bob really had going for him was that he would get too physically sick to drink for any really long period of time, but that I mean "Years". This time I think it went on for several months.

During that time he did have a few brief spurts of not drinking which always resulted in me getting a phone call wanting to see me. I always said yes.

He invited me to see the new place he rented. It was a cute little house in Studio City. I was pretty surpassed he moved over there but it was a house with a pool, not an apartment. I know he needed to be out from under the scrutiny of any neighbors prying eyes. It was hard to be his neighbor when he was drinking. I'm sure he thought a house could provide him more privacy.

Once again, there was a special room for his daughter. I was not happy with this choice of a residence because in order for his daughter to reach her bedroom, she had to go outside and up a staircase to get there. I think she was only seven at the time. I worried about that.

He wanted us both to forgive him and start fresh. We took his daughter out and let her pick out a puppy, thinking it was a fresh start and maybe he was serious this time. That little bit of happiness didn't last very long. During the week he had to take care of the dog, and himself. He was inches away from another slip.

The dog was out of control running all over the neighborhood and their neighbors started complaining. I will never really know what happened to that little dog, but one day it was gone. He said it ran away. A little Pomeranian just went missing.
I think someone just took it and gave it a better home. He wasn't well enough to take care of it.

During the time in this house all the "Working Girls" started to come over again.
His disease was progressing so rapidly now it was hard to keep up with him. In and out of hospitals and then back to using.
He was so sick at one point he called and asked me to please come over. I did.

He was living on cold cans of soup which he could barely keep down. He was in bad shape but not bad enough to get sober.
There was evidence of drug use going on in the house all over the place. I had never known him to use needles for anything, but his "friends" did. It was a terrible scene.

During this time he met up with a woman whom he said was a "Madam" or something. Who knows. All I know is that his poor daughter had to spend time with him and this woman and her child. He informed me that this was his new fiance.
One night she called me to give me the happy news. I have no idea why she would do that, but I actually congratulated her.
Of course it wasn't sincere because I knew what she was in for. She said they were going to take a trip to Tahiti, a trip I refused to take with him. Actually I refused to go anywhere with him unless he was sober. I would not have wanted to be her for anything.

So off they went to Tahiti. Only a couple of addicts could turn Paradise into a nightmare vacation. It was a vacation from hell. When he got home he landed in the hospital just about to have his leg amputated from a cut he got on a coral reef that was not properly taken care of.

A new kind of nightmare was about to unfold.

Living alone

So after all the drama of the past few years, believe it or not living without him was harder than living with him. I was so sad. The world seemed bleak.
One day I was walking down Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills and I ran into his old Legal Secretary. I just burst into tears when she asked me how I was and how Bob was. I was heartbroken. In spite of everything we had been through, I still just loved this man.

I often think about how some people can just end a marriage or a relationship and start dating the following week. I was in mourning. I had a constant knot in my stomach. The days and nights became endless for me so I started hanging out with all of our former friends in the AA program. There was this amazing group called "Try God" that was full of relatively young sober friends of ours. They reached out to me in this horrible time for Bob and included me in all their activities which included dances, movies, barbques and even a outing to Magic Mountain and the State Fair.

Little by little I was learning to have some real fun again. I tried dating a little but my heart was never in it so I just hung out with the girls in the group. I think I've been to more AA meetings than any non drinker I ever knew. I know the 12 step programs like the back of my hand. It gave me hope. Something to grab onto, because in my heart I just knew that Bob wanted to be sober more than he wanted to be drunk. I just knew it.

Several months had gone by since I moved out and I wasn't around when he also moved out of our shared apartment, but he had a new place that was all his own now. He was spending a lot of time with his cousins at the time and I have to say not always the best company where the "Ladies" were concerned. It was during this time that he would meet one of the most beautiful women I have ever met in LA. She was a former Prom Queen in her home town and came to Hollywood to make it big and become a "Star" Well, she was a working girl, but not in the movie industry. Another sad story of a shattered dream.
The reason Bob was always attracted to the "Working Girls" were their access to the things he couldn't get from the doctors. I won't spell it out but you get the hint.

One of Bob's weaknesses was that he just couldn't stand to be alone, ever. With this crown he found he could pay for company so that he didn't have to be alone in addition to the rest of it.

I haven't much to tell of this period until something tragic was about to happen. We started speaking again and he took me over to his new apartment to show it off. He had set up a really nice place for himself and even had a great room for his daughter. I was impressed. I think hanging out with his cousins had curbed some of his drinking for a while. During this time one of his cousins was having some very serious problems with the other cousins best friend. There was a dispute and the friend was asked to get out of the apartment he was renting because another friend was going to be moved in.

Things just started to get out of hand and Bob went to a hearing to testify that Stephen was a loose canon ready to go off the deep end at any moment. As a former Assistant Deputy DA, Bob did have a sense of these things. He had learned to interprete the criminal mind rather well. He warned the woman who was the mediator that Stephen was going to cause great harm to someone. She just dismissed the idea altogether like they were all paranoid. Less than a week later Stephen attacked and Killed his cousin Michael in a park in Beverly Hill's public bathroom.

That event shattered an entire family who till this day struggle with the tragety. Bob tried to warn the mediator, no one listened.

I didn't see too much of Bob after the funeral. He sunk to the bottom of some bottle and didn't surface until he called me from yet another hospital.

This time I really thought he would stay sober. Life was just too painful to relive the scene without Michael. Sobriety seemed his only relief.
It was at this rehab that he was part of what the group "The Wild Bunch" affectionatly named themselfs. Bob was starting to be less and less embarrased by his disease. He had been through enough rehabs and listened to enough other patients to finally believe he was not a bad man, just a man with a terrble disease which when he picked up a drink he was no longer capable of making any rational choices. He was always ending a drunken run now either in a hospital or in trouble with the police like drunk driving or drunken disorderly etc.

One of the guys in this group was Gary, a former heroine addict who did not have anywhere to live when he got out. It was right around Christmas and Bob invited him to live with him until he got on his own two feet.

I thought maybe it would be just the thing to help him stay sober. Two people in a house supporting each other's commitment to sobriety. Things were good.

We decorated the house for Christmas together. We bought a tree, presents. the entire holiday could not be better. Because Gary was living in the bedroom set up to be his daughter's on the weekends they would stay with me. We were back together and we all seemed happy.

Bob his daughter and I even had a great New Years Eve together. We spent it at my apartment and we got hats and noise makers and it was fun. Every now and then I look at the pictures of us wearing our New Years Eve hats and remember how much fun we used to have together. I loved them both very much.

Could this last? That was the question.

And On and On

To the best of my recollection sobriety lasted until after Christmas that year. I can't remember just when but it started to get a rhythm going 6months sober, six weeks sober, six days, sober and then always another rehab.

I can only remember the worst events accurately because the rest just blended in to one another. As I mentioned I lost count after 31 times. For example.

Bob goes to Camarillo where he is in a locked ward for trying to slash his wrists again and I desperately tried to get him out.When I got there the place scared me. During the day they would lock the patients out of their rooms for some reason and they were just all wandering around the halls until evening. I was appalled. I'm sure I must have called his dad and finally I think his dad had arranged to have him transferred to a private hospital near Westwood. He was grateful to be there. It was there that he learned to make little frogs in ceramic class or something. He was there twice.

The night John Lennon was killed, Bob was in Rehab in a great place in Tustin. I broke the news to him there. It was one of the places I helped him get out early from. At that time I didn't know how to practice touch love yet.

Then he started to hang out with the "MOB" guys again and that's whey I just couldn't do it anymore. He announced when I got home from work that we were having this thug Jimmy over for one of my special Italian dinners. I would not cook and pretend to entertain a bunch of drunken hoods. I gave him an ultimatum them or me.
He choose them. I left and slammed the door behind me. I went to the receptionist house for several hours and when I got home all hell broke loose.

Bob was beyond drunk and he was really angry. He threatened to throw me out of our apartment and he called the police. Fortunately for me after he called them he went outside to wait for them. I locked him out. He created such a disturbance outside that when the Police got there they hauled him off to the Beverly Hills Police department for the night. It was a Friday, I will never forget it because the next day, Saturday Morning his friend, an attorney, who bailed him out of jail, called me and told me if I was smart I would just leave and move out.

I packed a bag, and I never lived there again. I spent the weekend looking for a place to live and my friend put me up at her apartment until I did. I finally found a two bedroom cute apartment and I rented it. I called his dad and I asked him if he could loan me $500 to move in. He was so kind and I got the money to make the move.

Ten days later, I had to pick a day when Bob was not home to move all my stuff out. I was terrified that he would come back, but he did not. All the furniture in the place was mine except for the bed we bought together. I left it for him along with some kitchen stuff and towels.

I was on my own for the first time in almost two years. My how the time flew between dramatic events.

The Cycle Begins

Bob came out of rehab and we decided to move out of the "hood". With his father's financial help we found a really wonderful two bedroom apartment in Beverly Hills. It was one of those two story fantasy apartment buildings. We loved it and so did his daughter. She was close to her mom's house when we had her on the weekends and I'm sure everyone felt much better that she was in a very safe area now. I was cutting hair in a salon in Beverly Hills now, so it was really convenient for me also.

The only problem was that Bob no longer was practicing law and his days were spent waiting for me to come home from work. In the beginning he would read all day, something he did all the time from that point until the end. I would get home and we would head into Westwood to see a movie and have a bite to eat.

This sober period lasted for approximately six months, then one day he just picked up a drink and the nightmare started all over again. I honestly cannot tell you how many times he started and stopped drinking before the next attempt at killing himself happened. He had been out of another rehab and they released him with antabuse. It is supposed to help alcoholics not drink. Well Bob took an entire bottle with a fifth of vodka and had to be rushed to the Hospital. They held him for a couple of days to evaluate him and make sure he was physically ready to be released. When he left his doctor gave him a really good talk telling him how much he had to live for and wondered why he would try to end his life.

Bob came home and immediately went out and bought a bottle of Vodka. It was baffling to everyone. After several attempts at staying sober again his family decided to step in with a solution.

Bob was going to live in Israel on a kibbutz. His uncle and his family were all on their way there and they would take Bob with them. The only thing was Bob would not go without me. I loved him so much that I agreed to move to Israel with him. I could not leave at the same time as they did because I had to quite my job and sublet our apartment. I made arrangements to leave in two weeks.

I felt really lucky because our new receptionist was willing to sublet our apartment fully furnished. I left two weeks later.
I met him in Jerusalem and he had a great hotel with his family there. It was amazing. The following day we went to Tel-Aviv
and again we stayed in an amazing hotel right on the beach. We went into town and started looking for a kibbutz that would take the two of us. There were not that many that would take a non Jewish person, but we managed to find one out near the edge of the country. If you don't know what a Kibbutz is, it is a community run in the purest for of communism. You are provided with everything for your working. Housing, clothing and food.

It was called "NA ON". They were famous for making sprinklers and it was a very wealthy kibbutz by kibbutz standards.
The following day his uncle hired a car and took us there to make sure everything would be ok. When he was satisfied he left. They took us to get our work clothes and showed us to our "room" It was like a migrant farm workers cabin.
That night I cried myself to sleep. I was in a foreign land and was now going to be picking fruit and working in a sprinkler factory. It was a far cry from Beverly Hills.

I dug down deep and pulled myself together. After all, I had no choice. We did not have a return ticket to go back home. The family sent us there forever. I had brought my life savings with me, $500.
I started Hebrew school the following day. One of the rules for allowing us to stay in the same room was that we both had to attend what they call the Ulpon. A school that is taught in Hebrew to learn more Hebrew. I was the only non-Jew there.
I had to beg the teacher to please tell me something in English. I was simply lost. She was kind enough to teach me how to say "I don't speak Hebrew" that was the only thing I ever learned.

We settled into our routine rather quickly. If we had a good attitude it would be ok. The good thing was that all the other people in the Ulpon were young. Most of them were from South Africa and spoke English. As Halloween approached we all got ready for a party. Now we didn't have costumes so I showed up with a bathrobe and a shower cap on. That was the best I could do I don't remember what Bob went as.

What I do remember is that the punch bowl was filled with a alcohol based punch. The nightmare was just beginning again.
Bob did not get drunk that night, but he did drink. I had hoped that maybe he could handle the few drinks without going off the deep end. The next few days seemed to go ok except for his mood swings.

Little did I know that before I arrived, while he was in Switzerland with the family, he had already picked up his first drink. He was a time bomb just ticking away. He was now what they call, into "White Knuckle" sobriety. There was no support group, no rehab, just his staying dry. That is a big difference from sobriety. The weeks just went by with us picking fruit and on the weekends we would hitch a ride into Tel-Aviv. Bob had relative there who were so kind to us. One weekend they invited us to lunch and the younger cousins took us to see Cesarea. I loved it. An ancient Roman city. On other weekends we went to movies, cafes, the beach etc. It would not be so bad living there I felt.

Then the fateful night happened, Bob picked a fight with me, as was his habit when he wanted to get drunk, and he left the Kibbutz. I was frantic. I had no way of reaching him, no cell phones in those days and I knew he would be in grave danger if he started drinking.

Just like today, it is not safe to wander around as a Jew or an American in Arab territory alone, especially if you were the kind of drunk Bob was. Our kibbutz was right next to what is now famous for being Saddam Houseins home. Ramallah.
I don't know how he survived that night. When he came back the next morning, he told me that he was so drunk, they probably just thought that he was crazy and left him alone. That was the good news, the bad news was that he told me to pack up, we were leaving. I didn't know what we were going to do, but I followed him and we took a bus into Tel-Aviv.

We didn't have much money left from the $500 I brought with me, but we found a hotel for $25 a night. It was in the worst part of town. I didn't know that there was a "red light" district but there is and we were staying in it. Our room had holes in the walls and it was pretty dirty. Except for the sheets which were clean. Bob wanted to go out and get really drunk, I refused to go with him. He was gone for several hours and when he got back another beating was in store for me. This time I ended up with a battered face and a big black eye.

The next morning when he took a look at me I guess he beat me up in a black out, he decided to go drown himself in the ocean. He just wanted to die. I ran after him, and watched him swim as far out as he could. I was screaming for someone to help me. No one did. I guess he had a change of heart, and he came back to shore, exausted.
I called his father and begged him to please get us home. He did arrange for two tickets back to America. We managed to get from the Hotel to the airport the next day and we looked so bad, me with my black eye and him just plain sick. We had to be searched and everything. They finally released us and when we got our seats the worst possible thing for us happened.
We were scheduled to spend the night in Copanhagen. I don't know why. The airline put us up in a very nice hotel for the night. Bob went out drinking, and I took a nice hot bath trying to sooth my aching body. He did make it back to the hotel that night ane we managed to get on the next flight back home.
The worst thing happened to us though, we were seated in business class and they let you have free drinks. Bob started drinking heavily. The plain stopped in Seatle before LA and he was so drunk, he was threatning to get off and go visit one of his fraternity brothers. The flight attendant and me stopped him from leaving. We made it back to LA.


When we got there we literally had no money to get us from the airport to his dads house, where my car was parked. We were told to take a cab and he would pay for it. When we got there we rang the bell and his housekeeper answered the door with cab fare and my car keys. We were not let in the house.

We were lucky we had an apartment to go to. My friend who sublet our place changed her mind and left. His father was just about to take everything out and put it in storage and let the place go. We dodged the homeless bullet that night.

We now had to try and get our lives back together. It was the week before Thanksgiving and he really wanted to be with his daughter. I had $82 in an old savings account and I pawned all my jewelry. We had enough money to buy and prepare a nice dinner for her. I covered up my black eyes the best I could. She was too young to notice, but when I look at pictures of myself I can still see them.

Our life was a Nightmare and I did not know how we would ever get out of this horrible cycle.

Off the subject for a moment

Today I had to go to small claims court to try and get money owed me back. I have been trying to get back the money I spent on someoneelses business, whom I worked for as an assistant, although under sworn testimony in court he denied it. But this person is a member of the California Bar Association, so I guess that gives him a license to lie.

Anyway I was totally prepared for his denial and I presented the Court with evidence showing that I indeed did work for him. My very own Lexus Nexis folder along with his. You can only get this if you are an attorney and then you can give your employee's access to the service with their very own password. That was how I got one.

I'm sure he was pretty surprised when I showed up in court with that along with emails sent to my email address pertaining to his business stating I was his assistant. He somehow got 5 people to perjure themselves against me stating in signed documents that I had never been his assistant. Two of these people I have never met and the other three I have only met once and it was on totally different occassions. Outside of his legal work.
This is what our world is faced with. You try and get what is owed you and instead of getting paid back they try to discredit you and slander you.

Did anyone see the movie Liar Liar? Well I say no more.

Playing cat and mouse with Oblivion

The disease was progressing into something I could not comprehend. I had never been in the presence of someone who simply hated his existence and probably himself.
He was acting out, they call it a "cry for help". I heard his crys Loud and clear and still I could not help him.

I would come home and find him lying in bed with his wrists slit, actually there is still blood stains on the mattress of the pull out couch which was our only bed at the time. I would clean him up, feed him, and try to reason with him about how much he had to live for.

He didn't feel that way. His family was practicing tough love on him and simply left him to his own destructive behavior.

He was the "Golden Boy" in the family. They first one to get into Stanford in his family which started a whole line of relatives that would follow in his footsteps.
In the DA's office he never lost a case except I believe one. He was the smartest person I had ever known. I could not understand his fall from all that.

I have witnessed what it is to be a "Torchered Soul" it was heartbreaking and frustrating. We were both now 30 years old and life seemed too painful for him to continue. He tried to jump out of our apartment window one night. I must tell you that this apartment was in the Ghetto. The neighborhood was so bad that we were the only people living in our building that didn't have multiple families living with us.
He was no longer working, didn't have a car and started hocking whatever to get money for booze. I can't tell you how many times he walked down to the corner liquor store with a pocket full of pennies and change to buy a bottle of cheap Vodka.

We had two visitors at this apartment, one was my ex who literally broke into tears when he saw where I was living, it was a far cry from the house in Sausalito that we had together. The other visitor was his father, who offered to move us to a better neighborhood for the sake of his young daughter's safety.

When she came to visit on the weekends I think she must have been so scared when I look back at it. There was always a lot of loud music playing from the neighboring apartments, and once there were people spying on her through their windows.
She lived in a beautiful house in Beverly Hills, with her mother, and had the maids taking care of everything. It was like being in two different world for all of us.

That's what love can do for a person. I never cared about our surroundings. I just wanted to be with him. I wanted to SAVE him from himself. I just didn't know how.

After almost a year of being drunk and sick Bob checked into St. Johns Hospital for yet another attempt at getting sober. This was the first of many attempts at sobriety while we were together. I lost count somewhere after 30 times.

The one thing that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that Bob wanted to be sober more than he wanted to be drunk. The sheer number of attempts to get sober where testimony enough in my mind.

What I had to learn was how to not Enable him. It was the hardest part of our life together.

The first time the hospital staff made me go to an Al-Anon Meeting, I left there upset and appalled at what I heard. In my world I always thought that you had to help your loved ones. They told me that I was not helping him, but hurting him by taking care of him. I did not agree. Actually had I listened to their advice, I think Bob would have died many years before he did.

The one person he knew that would always be there for him, no matter how tough or how many bad things that happened, was me. I am grateful to my God that I never abandoned him, no matter how angry he made me, I always forgave him. He was a sick man, not a bad man, as so many people viewed him. He simply needed help.

R.I.P. BOB

Today, Bob would have been 58 years old. I really wish he knew how much Matt and I miss him.
I took a small potted rose bush to place by his head stone and I had this cold chill run throgh my entire body when I read what was written or should I say not written on his grave marker.

BERNARD J PICK

(his name in Hebrew)

1948- 2005

You are in our thoughts.


That was it. Cold so cold. Bob deserved so much more than that. No mention that he was a beloved son, a beloved father, a beloved brother, or the best friend you would ever have. A kind man, the kind of man that would and did, give you the shirt off his back. A man who lived to make his children happy. And even when he was torchered by all his demons, that part of him remained consistent. It was the reason I fell in love with him and remained loyal to him even when our own relationship shattered under the chaos of his disease.

When Bob died so suddenly all the arrangements were made by his family. First of all I was in too much shock to be of any use, as he died practically in my arms, and second, I am not Jewish so I could not be involved in any of the details.
This can't possibly be all he meant to his family, it must be an oversight on someone's part, at least I hope so. They no longer speak to me because when he passed away so suddenly, our divorce was not final and his executor and I are in the middle of settling it. In my mind and by California Law if you have a long term Marriage, with no prenuptuals, the other party gets half. But not in this family. My step daughter would rather give money to attorney's than give me what is legally mine. But enough of that for today.

It makes me wonder if once Bob was gone how the real feelings of his death affected certain people. I got to the cemetery around 1:30. I thought I would go late enough so that if his daughter wanted to visit he father's grave site we would not run into each other. No one had been there or to his father's grave either. I brought them both flowers and sat and had a nice "talk" with them. How is it that once you are gone that's just the end of it. GONE No visits no flowers no sadness just nothing. It wouldn't have been so obvious to me if there were some sentimental statement carved into the marble for all the world to witness how loved and missed he was. But there was nothing, not even a date that he was born or died. The Basics.

Is that all he deserved? I think not. His every breath was consumed with love for his children. Even when that love was not returned his love never faltered. Even when his heart was broken by deeds of his daughter. He always forgave her. Like a puppy dog just wanting to be loved by an abusive master. That's how he was.

At least he was loved and appreciated by others and I hope that he took that love with him. I hope that he is resting in peace finally. I hope he found the peace that eluded him so much of his life. I pray he is looking down at his son and myself and he knows that our world has come to an unbearable black hole that we will try to get over. But everyday the phone does not ring with him calling to wake me up, or just to see how I am, is like an eternity.

Unless you have lost your soul mate, none of this will make any sense to you. He was my soul mate. I was the one in his life that forgave him everything, always. Right up till the end. I would never abandon him. Divorce could not separate us, nothing could. The silence is earth shattering without the sound of his voice calling me "STEPH". He must have called my name a billion times over 25 years that we were together. I used to cringe when he called, our son and I would make jokes about how many times he called my name, wanting me to do something for him. Now I would give anything just to hear my name called out by him just one more time. The silence is deafening and I can't hear anything but my own heart yearning to have him back in our world. To make it work this time. We were so close to regaining our lives and then within a second it was ripped away and I am left picking up the pieces of our broken life. Trying to figure out why. I loved this man so deeply so totally, that I tried everything I knew to help him get "better". In the end tough love was not the answer. I was replaced with another enabler. someone who would see it like he did because they shared the same problems.
But I was not an enabler and he would come to me and ask for advice on how to handle the situations that he found himself in. At least he came to know that it wasn't easy to watch someone hurt themselves. He knew that the only way to help someone was not to enable them. He got it finally, and we were going to try and build a life again based on that foundation.
It worked once before, I believe it could have worked again, but now it's all speculation.

If you are up there watching me today Bob, I know you feel how much I love you and I miss you. Rest in Peace my love.

Deceptive

How could such an incredibility smart, well educated, handsome man be so torchered in his life that he no longer found a reason for living. This was the journey we were about to embark on. He just simply could not stop drinking. In the beginning I didn't believe that. I really thought it was mind over matter. It wasn't. It was a very misunderstood disease. I spent all my free time trying to find out what was going on. Why was his life reeling out of control. A divorce could not have been the entire reason, especially since he was not happy being married.

He decided that maybe a change of scenery would help him to feel better. We started out on a "Road Trip" to see his best friend up in Northern California. They had grown up together from the high school days. They both went to the same boarding school and were like brothers. He thought seeing his friend would do him good. So off we went to Northern California.

His friend was actually teaching at their old school and also living there. It was weird for me to go to this old mansion which was now his friends apartment also. He had an apartment type situation on the top floor of this old former mansion which was and had been a part of this Prep School that they went to.

The first night there Bob got really drunk "surprise, surprise" and opened the windows on the top floor and crawled out on the ledge and started walking around out there. He was three stories up high and I was freaking out. I begged him to come back inside. It was the first time I realized he indeed was a man with a death wish. An adrenaline junkie or whatever. I would come to accept in time that he had no fear of dying and at times actually seemed to get pleasure from putting himself in harms way.
The only problem was he couldn't find the courage to do it, so he flirted with danger with an attitude of "Whatever". There was no fear ever.

journey into my world: Change

journey into my world: Change