Pearls My Mother Wore

Whitney Houston’s death has affected me in a way I never expected; I’m envious.  I thought it was anger that I was feeling, but no; it’s envy.

Thirty-five years ago, on February 13th, my mother drank herself to death.  She was forty-three.  After a weekend of around-the-clock drinking at a sleazy bar on the corner of San Pablo Avenue and University, where her husband was a bartender and therefore had the keys, she suffered a heart attack.  Because she was so intoxicated, she couldn’t convey to him that she was in trouble.

They had driven down to the Berkeley Marina, possibly to enjoy the sunset.  The view would have been west across the shimmering bay that ebbs and flows from the mighty Pacific Ocean.  The city lights of San Francisco would have been flickering to the right, and beautiful Mt. Tamalpais would have been in silhouette to the left.  Thick, billowing fog may or may not have been tumbling through the Golden Gate.

By the time her husband realized that she wasn’t O.K., he drunk-drove across town to Alta Bates Hospital where she was pronounced “Dead on arrival.”  Peace be with her.

I was sixteen.

Heart attack or alcohol overdose, it really doesn’t matter.  What matters, and what I do battle with even to this day, is that she chose alcohol over everything else.  She didn’t just drink one day and die; she drank day after day after day.  She chose alcohol over and over again.  Why she did that is her business, but she repeatedly poisoned herself until finally her young body said enough is enough.

My business is to make sure I don’t do the same thing.  Oh, and FYI, in 1948, my maternal grandmother dropped dead off of a bar stool when she was forty-two years old from cirrhosis of the liver.

So, “Envy?” you might ask.  Yes.  Envy surreptitiously gnaws at my resolve to live a different kind of life.  I’ve made different choices, but envy tells me that I want what they had: abandon.  Oh sweet reckless abandon, checking out, total oblivion, not giving a damn, being free from inhibition, discarding all commitments and responsibilities, unthinking and uncaring.  Death is not too high a price to pay; come hither envy calls; you know you want it.

I must, must, must remember that I’m vulnerable to this sick seduction.  As long as it’s my choice, I choose life over death.  Of course I do.  Why shouldn’t I?  Life is so good.  I have nothing to run from when I remember to be honest with myself about the places that hurt and the pain I wish to hide.  I have friends who understand this.  They are my people, my winners circle.  I stay close to them because they save me from my own crazy thinking; they save me from my head that’s out to kill me.

My heart goes out to Bobbi Christina, Whitney Houston’s daughter.  It will be a miracle if she finds some perspective and is able to rejects those wicked, self-annihilating daemons.  I hope she finds a winners circle of her own.  I know it’s possible because I’ve done it.  I’m forever grateful.  Gratitude is what keeps tipping the scale in my favor.  I get to remember that it’s up to me to create a life that’s worth waking up for; thank you, thank you.

These twelve steps can’t fix my problem, but they help.  I think of them as a sieve.  I pour myself into them and what comes out is cleaner than what went in.

Peace be with us.  Have a great week, and I’ll post again next Friday.

Here are a few great “envy” quotes:

• Envy is like a fly that passes all a body’s sounder parts and dwells upon the sores —George Chapman
• Envy, like the worm, never runs but to the fairest fruit; like a cunning bloodhound, it singles out the fattest deer in the flock —Francis Beaumont
• As a moth gnaws a garment, so does envy consume a man —Saint John Chrysostam
• As iron is eaten by rust, so are the envious consumed by envy —Livy
• Envy hit him … like lack of oxygen —William Mcllvanney

 

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