Finally

Well two weeks later I actually went into labor it was around 3 am put I waited until the doctor's office opened because my contractions were pretty mild and far apart.

When I finally did call the Doctor he told us to go to his office and he would meet me there. He didn't think I had dilated enough to actually go to the Hospital yet.
I was so confused I had no idea what I was supposed to be feeling. All I knew was that I didn't want to drive all the way back to Santa Monica from Beverly Hills and then back again once labor was really full blown.

I guess I was nervous because of all the complications I had experienced. I really thought that I would give birth relatively fast. Like the baby was just going to come flying out, silly me. I was fully prepared to have a natural child birth experience, no drugs, no inducing nothing.

We called Dad and he arranged for us to wait in his office at the Hyatt on Sunset. It was so much closer to Cedars where I was going to give birth.

We hung out there for several more hours and when labor started up again we checked into the hospital. Then labor stopped they wanted to send me back home. I refused.
I asked them what I had to do to get labor going and they told me to start walking.
I must have walked the halls for hours.
My father-in-law and brother in law came with dinner for Bob and they all took turns walking me up and down the halls that night. It was so surreal. I really had no idea how much time was passing. But after twenty two hours of labor a very sweet nurse asked me if I wanted something. I asked her what she had. I was so over the whole Natural Child Birth experience I can't even tell you.

The anaesthesiologist came in and suggested that he give me a spinal epidural. We agreed. The problem was, this was 1984 in Los Angeles around 5:30 am. He was totally loaded on some kind of drugs. He was telling jokes, doing magic tricks and actually did the epidural wrong. The baby went into Fetal Distress, and my blood pressure started to drop really fast. I had an emergency C Section.
Even in the Operating Room this doctor was still doing Magic. Bob was freaking out, he normally had a very bad temper but he was helpless. At any moment he was about to loose me and our son. My Doctor delivered my son less than five minutes later and he was fine. They put him on my chest so I could see him and then they knocked me out to put me back together again.

My Doctor was so apologetic he thought we would sue him and the other doctor plus the Hospital for the ordeal we had all just been through. We were just so happy our son was OK, we never did do anything to that doctor. I was hoping he would be turned in by my Doctor. He may have been but I didn't want to go through all the legal stuff. Especially with a brand new baby.

I had to stay in the Hospital for several days because of the medication I had to take for the pain. I was on a Morphine Drip. I didn't feel a thing. Bob was so concerned that I wasn't getting enough pain medication that they "Asked" him to leave the hospital that night.
So much for a natural Birth. I was high on Morphine and my husband was experiencing some sort of dry high anxiety. It is just that was it always went. We had a great life, but what could go wrong would go wrong.

He left and I got a good nights sleep. Probably one of the last I would have for many years to come. My son was and is a total night owl. He never slept. He never cried but he was always awake.

Life was getting really fun and interesting.

Preparing for The Birth

We were just like any other expextant couple. We started to prepare our baby's nursery. It was all such an exciting time. During this time we made sure to include his daughter in what we were doing. She was still wanting to come over and see us on the weekends at that time.

I never really gave it much thought, but as I look back I often wonder why no one I knew ever gave me a baby shower. I guess my life with Bob had always been quite isolated. My family was all in Wisconsin, and he only had his Dad and Brother. No one from our AA friends really cared about us much either. I guess they were all betting that it would never last. People are funny that way. There was no shared joy just curousity about when it would all fall apart.

We knew better. Bob didn't return from Hell to pick up another drink, at least not for many many years.

Two weeks before my due date my doctor had me come into his office and he removed the stitches that were securing my Uterus. He sent us directly from his office to the Hospital Maternity Waiting area. We were all convinced that our son was going to just be born that night.
I wasn't really sure what was supposed to be happening, being my first time in this situation, but nothing happened. We sat there for over two hours, just waiting. It seemed rediculous.
I called the Doctor and asked him if I could just go home. All those months of thinking I would lose the baby didn't happen. And he sure wasn't ready to be born tonight. Not a single contraction happened.

We went home.

By this time I was so big. Not being able to do much more than sit and eat had taken a toll on my body. I went from 118 to 180 something. I was fat and uncomfortable.

We were Living a Normal Life

Our life had become so normal it was eerie. How does a person go from high drama and insanity to more than normal in less than a year.
Well I'm living proof that it can happen. The miracles are just around the corner if a person just doesn't pick up that first drink. Sounds so easy, doesn't it?
Well there were days that were living hell for Bob. He really didn't want to drink, it's just that the same old compulsion to drink never really left him.
At this time in our life I really did not understand how a DRY DRUNK could alter his personality so completely, but it could.

As happy as we were about the birth of our child the pressure was starting to build up in side of him. A combination of Bob's old pattern had reemerged. Bob had always experienced in his earlier attempts of sobriety that horrible grey area where he wasn't drinking, but he wanted to really bad and his behaviour was almost like he was drinking.
I had been told that I would probably never have children and don't forget, I had been with Bob for five years before I married him so this was definitely not something he was prepared for.The pressure of having me fairly out of commission and his trying to launch an acting career had begun to stress him out.
I was ordered to have an almost total bed rest pregnancy. All the things I used to do were not put on his shoulders. I couldn't lift anything, couldn't do the marketing really couldn't do much of anything.

Bob was used to me always looking after him. He was in strange waters when I needed him to take care of me. He now had to do almost everything, but clean the house and do the laundry. I could see the mood swings start to happen all over again for no reason.

It started out very subtlety, We were walking down the street in Beverly Hills one afternoon, and he started telling me I was fat. I was simply too stunned to argue with him. I started to cry. I couldn't believe he just told me I was fat. Of course I was fat, I was caring our child. Instead of realizing he had hurt my feelings, he started to get really mad at me for "Making a Scene" by crying. Of course this only made things worse. I think most women are more sensitive when they are pregnant, but I always heard these stories about women feeling so beautiful when they were pregnant, and how great they felt.
I was not having one of those experiences at all, I was never heavy in my entire life and I didn't see that one coming. The tension just kept building that day for some reason.
I still remember what I was wearing, that's how traumatic that day was for me. I had black stretch pants on and an over sized white men's style shirt. Simple but classic.

Things just went from bad to worse. I don't remember what we were doing in Beverly Hills that day, but we just went back to our condo in Santa Monica.
Bob was literally acting like a caged tiger. Nothing I said or did made him happy that day and I needed to be consoled for how mean he was to me. I think I may have asked him to apologize or something and before I knew it, he hit me in the stomach.
Obviously, it wasn't an all out punch, but there was the taboo that was broken. YOU DON"T EVER TOUCH A PREGNANT WOMAN NO MATTER WHAT. There was no turning back from that moment on. I was hysterical, not from pain, but from sheer terror. If he could do that, what else could he do? I had seen the bad side before, I never dreamed I'd be looking at it again, in my condition especially.

I really don't know how Bob didn't drink through that day.He promised God he would stay sane and sober if he would only give him a second chance at another family and a son. It was all just moments away from shattering our dreams.I can't imagine the instant panic and guilt he felt.

The Other Bob had stepped out into the open that day, and he couldn't seem to control it. I saw the panic in his eyes. We were at a serious cross roads in our life. The very foundation of this marriage was at risk here. I told him if he ever picked up another drink, the marriage was over. He saw his hopes and dreams die in his mind, if he listened to the demon inside his head. He did the only thing he could do to save me,the baby and the marriage from the inevitable pending disaster.
It was a very scary place for the both of us to be in. I couldn't defend myself if I wanted to, I have never felt so helpless and vulnerable in my life. I was literally at his mercy. The next thing he did was an amazing act of love.

He called his dad's house, spoke to the house keeper, and drove me over to have Gladys take care of me.He knew that if we spent any more time together especially with his frame of mind at the moment, anything could and would happen. He just couldn't handle his emotions. So in order to protect me, he did the smartest thing he could have done, he got me to a safe location where I would be taken care of and he would not be able to do anything else to me.

Gladys was so kind to me. She put me into bed to rest because I was so upset and stunned that he would do that to me.I think she was afraid I would miscarry. That's how afraid we all were. She stayed with me and told me to stay calm, because no matter what happened I needed to take care of myself for our baby. She also told me that, the child I was carrying was mine. There wasn't anything that could ever separate me from my child. She just had a gift for calming people down. I totally relaxed and was grateful for our couple of days together.
During those few days, Gladys told me so many stories about how much Bob's mother loved and understood him. He was always plagued with some sort of anger issues, even at a young age, she told me. His mother would always forgive him and tell Gladys that there was something not quite right with him. She forgave him everything always.

It finally dawned on me, why Bob loved me so deeply, but could be so cruel to me at times. That was how he treated the one woman he adored more than anything, His Mother. I too, always forgave him everything he had ever done. I was his rock, I of course did forgive him. Gladys nursed my fragile nerves and me back to health and then Bob came and took me back home a few days later. He was feeling better emotionally. He was back to his normal sweet self. Back in those days I could actually just forget and forgive. We did not dwell on it and we moved on. We had too much to be excited about. The fact that Bob didn't go out and drink was all I needed to know because that night and the next few nights following I really thought that he would go out and get drunk, but he didn't. I'm sure he wanted to but he didn't.
The time alone gave us both a chance to calm down. We never really fought about anything big. It was always the little things that got to us. A pattern that followed us our entire time together.

The rest of the pregnancy went along as most peoples. Except for one thing. Bob was now really so much kinder and really didn't mind that I needed his help. I think I made him feel better by needing him after what we had just gone through. He was cooking me breakfast every morning now to make sure that I was going to have a healthy baby. He made me the only thing he knew how to cook. Scrambled Eggs, every morning, scrambled eggs.
I have to tell you that till this day I have such an aversion to scrambled eggs, but I didn't tell him that at the time. I needed to show him that I forgave him and I knew it would never happen again and it didn't.
Of course we were normal and would have the occasional stressful days, the great times and the bad days. We were just like anyone else we knew only we were happier. We felt we were witnessing and living a miracle. Not just living a normal life.
We felt we were blessed but we also knew that if something could go wrong it would.

I started to break out with little red "rings" on my legs. The doctors did all sorts of tests on me, but they had no Idea what it was. So on to the next specialist it was. Then came the bomb shell. The Doctor said I had "Lupus".
We had never heard of it. We wanted to know what to do next and he told us that it was an incurable disease which could be fatal.

To be honest with you, the only thing I could do was to just block that out. I did not focus on what he said and quite frankly, I just didn't believe it. I had no desire to be sick, especially with a fatal disease.
I got better, and the spots never came back.

Is it mind over matter? I think it was. I would not engage that thought. Nothing in the world was going to stop me from having this baby and being healthy to take care of him for the rest of my life. I never did forget those words Gladys had told me. In my soul I felt that the life of my child was going to be my responsibility. Bob would be there, but there might be a time when he couldn't be and I prepared myself emotionally from then on. Me and my son against the world. Oh how prophetic that thought would turn out to be.

There is no logical explanation to why it just went away. Either the Doctor was wrong or I willed it gone. Whatever. Here I am twenty two years later. No signs of whatever. Bottom line, man becomes what he thinks about. I thought myself healthy. I always have.

TRUST

I'm sure I don't need to remind anyone that without trust there is really nothing.
If you can't trust your partner to the core of your soul, in my opinion you just have nothing. So many times in my life I have felt that knot in the middle of my gut, you know the one, the one that keeps you up at night, the knot that makes you physically sick. It's our inner voice telling us that something is wrong, no matter what another person is telling you to derail the consequences of their deceit, that little voice and that knot in your gut seems to always know the truth.

I had gone through five such years with Bob, never being able to fully trust that he would stay sober. That's why when ever he asked me to marry him I would always tell him "Someday". My gut told me it was not the time for such flights of fancy, I learned to trust that voice.

But this time things really were different. Everyday was filled with the knowledge that things would be OK even if we had the morning bad moods, before coffee or the little argument about whatever. My gut knew it was OK, we were only human. I also knew to the core of my soul that Bob was going to remain sober. I don't know why God removed the fear I once had of him relapsing, but he did. I no longer feared that.

I have recently been watching the video "The Secret" and I am reminded that I have lived that way for many many years. My thoughts became my truth. I knew from the moment I laid eyes on him that I would marry Bob, and I knew from the moment that he told me he had a drinking problem that it would all be resolved one day.
I never believed it would take him five years to reach this point, but he did finally get and stay sober, and I was sure it was going to last. I also knew that we could have a happy, normal life together, and we did for many years.

Positive thinking on both our parts kept us grounded on our path and our commitment to our relationship. We made it happen, then one day I started to feel really sick. It wasn't like anything I had ever felt before. It seemed like I could literally taste the smog from the traffic.

We were living in an apartment on Olympic Blvd. and I thought because it was extremely hot that June that maybe I was just sick from the heat. I was vomiting which I never did so I went to the Doctor.

I wasn't sick at all, I was pregnant. That in itself was really a miracle. I had just miscarried our child before Bob's last journey into his private hell, and the doctor told me that I would probably never conceive again. I was actually using birth control at the time so being pregnant was the last thing that I was expecting.

Bob on the other hand, just kept telling me that all his prayers were answered.
He promised the man upstairs that if he gave him a second chance at a family, perhaps give him a son so that he could be a great dad and take him to the ball games like he went to while in Kansas, that he would stay sober.The nun had kept telling him to pray and his prayers would be answered. I never saw him so committed to staying sober, and I had now been with him for over five years.

When we told our family the first thing that Dad did was tell us to start looking for a new place to live. He would help us buy a house or a condo so that we could bring this child into the world in a new home. Everything just seemed to fall into place. We looked all over town and finally found a beautiful condo in Santa Monica, right across the street from the ocean. It was so great for Bob, he loved being near the ocean and it really was close to where he grew up. He was putting his life back together. It was a fairy tale and we kept saying, "If it's easy it's meant to be."

I don't know how Dad managed it but by the time we actually saw the condo and brought Dad to see it, he had arrange all the financing for us to buy it. Now if that's not the "Secret" being put into action I don't know what was. I had no credit to speak of or a job for that matter and neither did Bob. But here we were with the help of Dad moving in to a new place. All within the first three months of my pregnancy.

We moved in and I was really sicker than a dog for those first three months and then the scare of our lives happened. Bob had to rush me to the hospital in the middle of the night. It seems I had lost our baby. It was close to three in the morning and the doctor told us that there was a 90% chance that I had already miscarried, but he scheduled an ultra sound in the morning just to be sure. It was the longest and saddest night of our lives. We were devastated, but we clung on to a faint thread of hope. In my soul I just refused to believe I had lost our baby and so did Bob

Morning came and I was wheeled into the ultra sound room. I will never forget the sight of our son on the screen. There he was. His little hands up near his face, maybe even sucking his thumb. I did not lose him he was alive. Another Miracle.

Our prayers were more than being answered. Bob was keeping his commitment to God and God was answering his prayers. I will never look at this as anything other than a gift from above and I'm not particularly spiritual or I should say I wasn't at that time of my life.

It was not going to be an easy pregnancy and as a matter of fact the following month I was told that I would have to remain in partial bed rest for the duration. I was more than happy to comply. I would do whatever it took to keep this child.
When we found out for sure through the amniocentesis that we were having a boy we decided to name him Matthew, which mean gift from God, and so he is.

I started knitting what turned out to be the smallest baby blanket on earth. I guess I just didn't have the talent for it, but it sure helped to pass the time away.
All I could do was go to the doctor, go to the dentist and knit or watch TV. I did not cook or clean anything during that time.

Bob would either make me scrambled eggs for breakfast or take me out and dinner was always delivered or eaten out. Up until today I still have an aversion to scrambled eggs. I never used to eat breakfast, but I had to then to have a healthy baby, so Bob made me eat and it's the only thing he could cook that I would eat in the morning.

It was a very surreal time for us. We bought our first video camera and started to document just how enormous I was getting. It brought us so much closer together and we had a lot of laughs and we were grateful for everything in our lives. In AA Bob was told that the miracle's were just around the corner, all he had to do was stay sober to get them and we knew that it was true. We did not falter from that belief.

His daughter's mom was also having a baby. This poor girl was an only child for nine years and now she was going to have two new siblings within 5 months of each other. That's an entirely different topic.

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.