November 18

GRATITUDE MONTH: DAY 18: “In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Yeah, I am going to do something I hardly ever do with my writing. I am going to write about someone I was blessed with from my very first day in rehab.

He was the person who sat with me and helped me answer questions as honestly as I could about my drug and alcohol use and abuse. He did that first intake with me and I fell in love with his green eyes. I did not know the role he was going to play in the last 31 years of my life.

Nor did I know that I would stay in recovery for all those years. Today, I am celebrating his life and the fact that, although he was almost 8 years sober THAT day, he would have been 20 years sober today. I cannot relate to anyone how grateful I am for both terms of recovery for this man. He was my greatest influence in those early days, and there are legions of us who had the same experience with him.

He walked the talk and we loved his energy and his love of 12 step recovery. What a gift!

I had gone to work in the same place, with him as my co-worker and friend. We worked in several places during those early years (of my recovery) and we became closer over that time.

I moved away to Arizona and we were no longer in touch. During the period just before that, he had relapsed after 16 years. When I found out, it was just a year before he was going to make it back into the rooms and those precious chairs we sit in.

I had moved back to CA when he was ready to come back to his life in recovery and make his amends with the law and clean up all the wreckage he had created. We began to talk on the phone and write letters back and forth. I am SO grateful for this old-fashioned and lovely way we got to communicate! It would never have been the same if we had texted and used a cell!

It was all perfect. After a few weeks, we got to see each other and began our journey together. At one point in time, my sponsor had me do some writing about my feelings for him, because she saw something in me she had not seen before…I was totally in love with him! And probably had been since that day in March 1986 when I first saw him and felt that wonderful energy he had! I began to talk with him about that and we decided to try it out.

He was embarking on a journey to clean up the wreckage of a long run out there. He had a lot of legal issues, a financial and career disaster, and tremendous health challenges. It was incredible!

I went to pick him up in Riverside, after a major court date; where he had been in treatment (in a place run by a man he had once sponsored!), and brought him home and kept him! It was the beginning of something I can only see ramifications of today. I did not know the impact and importance of the life I was about to have.

We had such a storybook romance, so sweet and powerful and short. It opened my heart, and then broke it into pieces. We loved and fought and had a great time, but it was over very soon. I am forever grateful for the experience of love I got to have with him. The home we created, the dogs we raised, the life we had.
He had re-introduced me to the place where I get all my healthcare now and where I have had the greatest healing journey of my life in the last year and a half. The benefits I receive for his death are the greatest portion of what I live on. When I went to college after his death, his benefits paid for me to live for the first 4 years of that.

I continue to reap those benefits and the love he left me. I can honestly say that I know what it is to be deeply and totally loved for exactly who I am. We had incredible adventures together in that short time. I learned to honor him and witness his life and his death. And I am so grateful for all he gave and still gives me and the richness of the life I have had since that day in March 1986 for his having been a part of my life. Thanks, Joser! You are always remembered and loved!