Not Dead Yet
My journey in co-parenting with an addict.
The first time their dad almost died my boys were four and six.
It had been more than a year since he and I had separated.
And six months since I’d had to take the kids from him.
Left to his own devices, he very nearly drank himself to death. A couple days before, he’d called his parents telling them he wasn’t feeling well. They told him to go to a doctor. He didn’t.
That morning, a neighbor found him outside, disoriented and seizing. The neighbor called 911 and an ambulance rushed him to the emergency room.
When I arrived at the hospital the next day, I stood, waiting in the sterile halls of the ICU. The treating physician emerged, “Mrs. E — — — ?”
“It’s Bennett. I never changed my name.”
“Bennett. Ok.”
I asked how bad it was.
“For someone to have done this kind of damage at 43, your husband had to be drinking a tremendous amount.”
His liver was failing. His kidneys were shutting down. His pancreas was barely functioning. He was having “pronounced cognitive impairments.” The doctor wasn’t sure if any of the damage was reversible.
I peered into the floor-to-ceiling white room before leaving. The sun beamed in, exposing the carnage. There he was — prone, unconscious. IV cords extending like tentacles from his limp arms. The telltale ruddy complexion of a committed drunk. The soft heaving of a bloated, blotchy heap bearing virtually no resemblance to the man in the sleek Kenneth Cole suit I’d married eight years prior on a gorgeous spring day in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina.
Beneath the rubble of the black outs lay the talented pastry chef whose kindness captured me in our beginning.
He was never a mean drunk. Jeff’s brand of alcoholism is the drink until you black out and keep doing that until everything is burned to the ground variety. Mostly, he just hurts himself. The doctor’s report was a testament to just how much. “He probably doesn’t have another relapse in him,” he said. “If there’s a next time, it’s likely to be fatal.”
It took the treatment team a week just to detox him. Another week to get him stable enough to leave the hospital. After that, it would be four weeks in rehab. Jeff was discharged into his parents’ care, incapable of taking care of himself at that point, not to mention the fact that the house was essentially uninhabitable.
I’d only bought the place two years prior, a commemoration of our California homecoming after a decade in Georgia. It was near-new construction, in perfect condition. When I walked through it in the aftermath of Jeff’s downward spiral, I was reminded of the many crime scene pictures I’d seen over the years in my capacity as a death penalty defense lawyer. There was no meaningful distinction, save the absence of a dead body.
Holes in the walls. Blood streaked across the floor. Empty gallon bottles of vodka stashed around the house. Our dogs had converted the place into one giant litter box. Flies and gnats had taken up residence. A cascade of unopened mail in the foyer.
I ran into a neighbor out front; the one who found Jeff and called 911. “I heard banging outside. He was pounding on his own front door, calling for his mother. I tried talking to him — asked if he was alright. He just laid down, right on the sidewalk. Then he started twitching some, so I called for the ambulance.”
I thanked the neighbor for what he’d done. “No problem,” he said. “I had an uncle who put himself in an early grave because of booze. I had a feeling that’s what was going on.” We stood there awkwardly; strangers connected through shared knowledge.
Why hadn’t I recognized the makings of an alcoholic when I began dating Jeff all those years ago? And how had he let it come to this? All valid questions. No certain answers.
Only a few years before this, he’d been in the top shape of his life. We were still in Atlanta then. He started running at 40 and was soon entering 5ks, earning first place in his age group in one race. By the time he was discharged from the hospital in February of 2017, he had to use a cane to walk.
While Jeff completed a stint in rehab, I juggled full-time lawyering as a single mom, met with various contractors who would perform the exorcism of the house necessary to sell it, and navigated the seemingly endless paperwork required by the insurance company to cover his hospital stay and rehab.
I remember googling the rehab place and being met with pictures of rolling green hills nestled within Northern California’s wine country, grape vines dappled in sunlight, and detailed descriptions of a chef-driven menu. “Jesus — can I go there?”
During the three-month span following Jeff’s first near-death experience when Max and Leo didn’t see their dad, I fumbled my way through fraught conversations with them about what was happening.
“Is Daddy going to die?”
“Will we ever see Daddy again?”
“Why does Daddy do this if it’s so bad for him?”
All valid questions. No certain answers. As my children faced me, searching for answers about their dad, I looked them in the eye and answered honestly that I didn’t know. I didn’t know if he was going to die.
I still don’t. That’s how it is with addicts. At best, you know how they are right now. Now tells you nothing about the future.
While their dad dried out and regained his strength, we lived in a cramped one-bedroom apartment. The boys shared the bedroom, while I spent the year sleeping in the living room on a couch I assembled from a box.
In the spring of that year, while his dad was in rehab, Max started waking up in the middle of the night with violent vomiting episodes. I’d hear him retching in the back room and sprint down our short hallway to evacuate him before he woke his little brother.
I’d lay him down on towels in the kitchen with a sippy cup of Pedialyte while I stripped the bedding. Then, I’d gather up the soaked sheets and take them down to the coin-op machine in the basement, which was, thankfully, usually free around 2:00 AM. Good nights were those when I had enough quarters to clean the sheets and the puke hadn’t hit the comforter. When it did, I bagged it like a dead body, knowing I’d have to get it to the laundromat the next morning.
Max missed eight days of school that spring. When a kid misses that many days in a semester words like “chronic absenteeism” and “truancy” get bandied about.
Something was wrong with my boy. His pediatrician referred us to a neurologist. “He’s suffering from pediatric migraines,” the specialist informed me. “With kids this young, vomiting is frequently the main symptom. The big question is what triggered them for him at this age? Has there been any unusual stress lately?” Yeah, you could say that.
By the time school was out for the year, we’d gotten a handle on the migraines. Summers in our town bring triple digit temperatures. With only a paltry window air condition unit in the front room, the boys spent most evenings sitting in a cold bath, suckling Otter-Pops, while I sat on the Pepto Bismol-pink tile floor reading them Shel Silverstein poems.
Almost two years to the day after Jeff’s initial hospitalization, he relapsed. I’d started to notice the signs when I’d pick the boys up from his parents’ home, where he’d been living since being sprung from rehab.
He was lethargic. He wasn’t responding to my texts. And when I asked the boys how their visits with him were, I got a lot of “Daddy doesn’t feel good” and “Daddy needs to rest.” When I pulled his parents aside and asked if he might be drinking again they were vehement that it wasn’t possible. They would know. Except they didn’t. But I knew.
On a cold Monday morning in January, I got the call from Jeff’s dad. He’d had to call 911. Jeff was having “some kind of seizure.” Again. He was taken away by ambulance. Again. He told me he’d be in touch when they knew more.
Both times this has happened, one thing has been clear — had Jeff not been found in time, he likely would have died. Both times, my emotional companions have been equal parts relief and rage. The boys had been with their dad the night before his relapse. All I could think in that moment was: thank God they weren’t there when it happened. How many times would he subject our children to this trauma?
The day of Jeff’s second hospitalization, I picked the boys up after school and brought them home to talk. They were six and eight by then. We piled up on my bed and I delivered the news.
“Guys, your dad is back in the hospital. He’s been drinking again. And he’s really, really sick.”
Max, hiding his face in my pillow, sobbed uncontrollably. He is my tender heart.
Leo, stone-faced, logged this betrayal. He is his mother’s son.
“I’m so sorry guys. Your dad loves you very much, but when people suffer from addiction, this happens sometimes” I told them. “I don’t know if your dad will ever be done with this. I hope he will. And we will continue to root for him, but I want you to hear me: this is not in your control, and it is not your fault. This is up to your dad, and no one else.”
“Are we going to see Daddy?” Leo asked.
“Not right now, Buddy. He’s in the hospital and he needs to rest and get better. And he can’t take care of you when he drinks.”
Maxwell, still blubbering, declared: “We’re going to need more pillows, Mommy.”
“What? Why, Maxie?”
“If Daddy dies, I’m going to need to scream into pillows — a lot.”
Leo pursed his lips, then gritted out “Jeez, Max. He’s not dead yet.”
He wasn’t. And he’s still not. In fact, this January marks five years of sobriety for him. And two years ago, he went back to school to become a registered nurse. Last month I took Max to his dad’s graduation ceremony. As we sat on the metal bleachers in the college gymnasium and spotted him sitting among the other graduates in a sea of scrubs, I found myself tearing up. It wasn’t so long ago that I was trying to prepare myself for the very real possibility of taking the boys to their dad’s funeral.
These triumphs are no guarantee, of course. But they’re not nothing either. Our boys are 11 and 13 now, and they’re doing great. And so far, we haven’t had to buy any more pillows.
