If I Die Before I Wake

by Barb Rogers

  “My sponsor used to tell me that if I wanted it all, I needed to do it all. All my life, I protected myself by saying I didn't need anyone. The truth was that it wasn't that I didn't need them, but that I didn't think I could have them. I carried that person into the program, coming across like the typical macho broad, totally self-sufficient. But through my spiritual awakening, understanding I didn't have to walk through it alone, I became willing to do whatever it took for recovery.”

  I smile as one particular day comes to mind. It happened right around Easter. I watched The Ten Commandments at Helen's house. As I watched Moses wander through the desert and struggle toward total surrender, I thought, Jesus Christ, even Moses only had to wander for forty days and forty nights. I'd been wandering for over thirty-five years. I'm tempted to share the story, but it smacks of religion and I don't want to offend anyone. “The hardest part of total surrender is turning over control of the outcome. However, considering my best efforts had me sitting in meetings, angry, sick, and scared, maybe it was time to let someone else give it a shot.

  “One problem with this total surrender business is that you don't get to do it once and you're good to go. Just as sobriety is one day at a time, so is spirituality. I've heard many people say they'd gotten a second chance at life. For me, I looked at this as my only chance. If I screwed this up, my life was over.”

  I've got a ways to go, and time is running out. I say, “I will try to wrap this up in the time allowed, but if I go over, and anyone needs to leave, feel free.” No one gets up to go. “I went after those steps like a dog with a bone, but soon realized it had taken half my life to get to them, and they wouldn't be worked quickly. It was more important to do them thoroughly. It was agonizing, writing down all the stuff I'd done, people I'd hurt, saying out loud those shameful, disgusting secrets. The thought of forgiving and making amends to those who'd done some terrible things to me was overwhelming but necessary, according to my sponsor, if I was to ever know peace.”

  I remember having thoughts of giving it half measures. However, the big book says half measures will avail us nothing. It doesn't say we get a little peace. “I prayed for forgiveness from those who'd died, stood over graves talking to others, wrote letters and burned them, even tried writing messages, stuffing them into balloons, and releasing them to float into the heavens. As difficult as those things were, they were easier than looking a person in the eyes. I had a hell of a time making amends to Tom. Every time I saw him, I ended up getting angry and saying something else I'd have to make amends for. After speaking with a woman from the meetings about it, I knew what I'd have to do—not only admit to what I'd done, but to how I'd felt about him all those years.

  “I did it. For the first time since I met him, I felt resolved, like I could put my feelings to rest, accept that I loved him but that we couldn't be together. I'd chosen a sober life, and he continued his drinking lifestyle. At home that night, I gave him to my Higher Power. He stopped calling me, so I figured I'd gotten my answer. Months passed as I pursued my steps with honesty and vigor. My situation hadn't changed, but I'd changed. I knew happiness, peace of mind, had attained a feeling of self-respect, and no longer had to fight the urge to drink or drug.

  “I lived in a state of gratitude for every little thing in my life.

  “As this God of mine had a way of doing, he threw me a curveball now and again just to shake things up. Tom called. He'd been sober for months, and wanted to know if I'd have a cup of coffee with him. Unsure what to do, I prayed about it, asking my Higher Power to let me know what direction to take. At the coffee shop, Tom pulled out his billfold to pay. It was the one Jon made for him when he was in Cub Scouts. At that moment, I knew Tom truly loved me. We were married a few months later, after Helen passed away, and have been happily married for over twenty years now. Talk about a miracle.”

  Like always, the great love I feel for Tom swells my heart until it's nearly bursting. I raise my arm. “It was like my life had been waiting for me all along, just out of reach, until I became willing to surrender. I know there are people in the meetings who think I'm so happy because of the life I share with Tom, the things I've accomplished over the years, but that's not true. I found peace and happiness while living hand to mouth in that garage. I don't believe I could have ever been happy with another human being until I found it within myself first.

  “Don't kid yourself that it will all be peaches and cream because you're sober. Life keeps happening. There will always be illness, death, financial problems, problems with family members, and God only knows what else. The difference is that with a program and a Higher Power, there will be solutions, if you are willing to use the tools. I have faltered many times, in particular when I went through a life-threatening illness. I wallowed in my self-pity for a short while, fell back into anger and resentment, but thank God and this program, I didn't drink, and found the willingness to get into action.

  In sobriety, I had the opportunity to become a professional costumer. I opened my own rental shop, which thrived, and I was living the dream. My illness took all of that away. I was pissed. However, through that experience, I discovered the writer in me. Sometimes the gifts we receive come wrapped in strange packages. Tom and I moved to our small mountain community in Arizona as a place for me to heal and write. And, I might add, I finally got the opportunity to write that exposé about Alcoholics Anonymous, exposing it for what it really is.” Laughter explodes through the room.

  “To sum it up, I joined a program I thought was the height of stupidity, found a Higher Power I didn't think existed, worked steps I saw as ridiculous and impossible, ended up in the last place on earth I thought I would ever go again, married the one man I thought was out of my reach, and have lived long enough, stayed sober long enough, to see all the promises come true in my life—which still blows my mind. You just can't get here from where I started—without divine intervention. There was the life I thought I would live and the one my Higher Power had planned for me when I was ready to accept it. I like His better.

  “I stand in awe of my life on a daily basis. Years ago, my sponsor told me that one day I would get to be the voice of joy. Well, here I am. I know joy, and I know if it is possible for someone like me, it can happen for you. So, when you wonder if it's worth the effort, I hope you'll think of me, and others like me, who worked those steps that allowed us to emerge from that dark place to a life beyond our wildest drunken dreams. Thank you for being here for me because without you, and others who have passed through my life, this program, and my Higher Power, I would not be the person I am. All that I am, all that I've accomplished, is a direct result of AA, the people in the program, and a God of my understanding. I will be forever grateful.”

  27

  Full Circle

  THE QUIET IS ASTOUNDING. Eyes closed, I listen to the whoosh of a raven's wings as he flies overhead and the water falling over the boulder behind the house as it rushes down the creek at the bottom of the hill. I feel the cool breeze ruffling my hair. I am taken back to another place, another time.

  My therapist had hypnotized me. He asked me to return to the last time in my life that I felt safe. Images of myself down on the river with Grampa the summer before school started began to take shape. I loved being there with him. Others may have seen him as just another old man, but not me. He was my hero. He knew things, special things, like how to glean leaves, bark, and berries from the woods to use them for healing. He had the gift of removing warts through his touch. People used to come from all over to have their warts removed. He didn't say much, but somehow I always knew he would protect me no matter what.

  Grampa tied a rope around my waist and threw me in the river to teach me to swim. He was of a mind that like in animals, swimming would be a natural instinct for me. I can't remember ever not knowing how to swim. When he made his secret fish bait, he allowed Bill and me to roll it into balls to be put on the trout lines. At dusk, in a rowboat, he'd glide through the muddy Kaskaskia R
iver, sticking the smelly bait on each hook. As hard as it was to drag myself out from under the patchwork quilt on the feather bed Bill and I shared with Grampa and Alma before sunrise, I couldn't wait to see what we'd caught. Sometimes there would be a turtle or a big old salamander, instead of the typical catfish, carp, or buffalo fish dangling on the line.

  Grampa's gentleness, his ability to tame a wild animal like our pet raccoon, Susie, or the squirrel who would eat out of his hand, amazed me. He would go off hunting sometimes, but never killed anything we weren't going to eat. I suppose we were poor, if you counted money, but I didn't know it until we lived in town, I started school, and other kids made fun of me. We always had plenty to eat, a warm place to sleep, a world of interesting things to do, and the Thompson Mill covered bridge that stretched across the river and gave rise to many of my childhood fantasies.

  My favorite spot was a creaky old porch swing tied between two trees with ropes. It was heaven to lie in the shade, look at the bridge, hear the soft ripple of the river flowing over the rock dam that Grampa, my dad, and his brothers built, and daydream. At times, between the movement of the swing to and fro and the squeak of the ropes, I'd drift off into wonderful, fanciful dreams.

  Often, after I got older and life bore down on me, I'd imagine returning to the river, where I would build a cabin and find the peace I'd long ago lost. I traveled there from time to time. It was never the same. The cabin and outhouse had been torn down, the swing was gone, the cornfields that had been my perfect hiding place from Grandma Alma, who'd never liked me much, barren and sad. Besides, the property was bought by my dad's brother, the stepfather who disliked me intensely. He'd remarried after Mom died, and finally had the family he wanted—not a couple of worthless brats like my brother and me.

  The last time I traveled to the river, the State of Illinois had constructed a concrete bridge parallel to the covered bridge, which was being conserved for its historical value. I stood at the foot of the new bridge, right where our cabin used to sit, watched the cars zip across the arched concrete monstrosity, and knew I'd never go back again.

  Today, sitting here on the front deck of our oddly shaped house that wanders up the side of the mountain amongst the boulders and scrub oaks, I understand it's not the river I missed, but how I felt there that I'd been trying to recapture all my life: the quiet; my childhood innocence; freedom; no worry about how others saw me, what they thought of me; but most of all, the simple life.

  Now, I have it. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, one of my all-time favorite movies, the solution had been with me all along. But like Dorothy, I had to overcome a lot of obstacles to find my way home. My personal yellow brick road began the day I walked into my first 12-step meeting.

  In early sobriety I lived in forced simplicity. There were homeless people, people who lived in cars, that had more possessions than I did. And they probably had friends. Through my addictions and behavior, I'd lost everything, and everyone. At age 35, alone and sick in more ways than one, I resented having to start over yet again with no buffer between me and a cruel world. Today, I know it was an essential part of my journey.

  Last night at the meeting in Congress, a small town at the foot of the mountains, I picked up my 26-year sobriety chip, blew out the candles on the cake, and shared part of my story. I laughed when I said, “I think God looked at me, shook his head, and thought there was nothing left to do but take me down to nothing and start over,” but somewhere deep inside, I believed it. It wasn't until I discovered how little I knew that I could open myself to the possibilities of my life.

  By the time Tom and I married twenty-three years ago, I'd learned what it meant to carry the river in my heart wherever I went, through whatever I was doing, with whomever was with me. Since then, I've become that little girl again: the one who loves completely, knows trust, awakens each morning ready to explore a new and exciting day, and finds joy in the smallest things. She'd been struggling to get out all my life, and the twelve steps gave me the tools needed to mend my ravaged mind and heart. My body didn't fare quite so well, but I'm impressed that it's still up and walking around, considering what I've put in it and done to it. I'm officially twice as old as I, or anyone who knew me back then, ever thought I'd be.

  ——

  Tom is coming up the road, our two new dogs on long leashes, darting here and there. My heart beats a little faster, swells with a warm, comfortable love that reminds me of the day I first fell into the embrace of a God of my understanding. I always get maudlin this time of year as I reflect on my life. Sometimes, I feel like great streams of light rainbows and bubbles will burst forth from my body because I can no longer contain my joy.

  Kahlil Gibran said, “The deeper sorrow carves into your soul, the more joy you can contain.” His words flash through my mind as Tom joins me on the deck, hands me a cup of coffee, and leans against the railing to gaze out at the landscape. He says, “How in the world did we ever end up here?”

  “Maybe it was a God thing,” I respond.

  “You think?” he says, and laughs. “I know it wasn't my idea.” He'd always said that when he retired, we'd move to the country outside his hometown in St. Elmo, Illinois, build a cabin, raise hounds, and do some quail hunting. That was the plan.

  I, on the other hand, never figured I'd live long enough to retire—and on the off chance that I did, I imagined myself working until I dropped dead. I certainly wasn't planning on doing that in Arizona, where so many bad things happened in my life. There was a better chance that I'd see my picture on a post office bulletin board than that I'd end up here, writing books on recovery, happy and reasonably healthy, having a real life. God must have had a big belly laugh while we were making plans.

  When Tom goes into the house to get a piece of cake I brought home from last night's meeting, I can hold back no longer. Overwhelmed with gratitude, silent tears roll down my cheeks. Raising my face to the cloudless turquoise sky, I whisper, “Thank you for everything.” And I mean everything. I know it has taken every moment, all my experiences, good and seemingly bad, and every individual who passed through my life to bring me to this moment in time, to the person I am today. I've come full circle, back to the little girl on the porch swing full of hopes and dreams, who at the end of the day knelt by her bed, hands pressed together, whispering, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

  About the Author

  Barb Rogers learned most of her life lessons through great pain and tragedy. After surviving abuse, the death of her children, addiction, and life-threatening illness, she succeeded in finding a new way of life. She became a professional costume designer and founded Broadway Bazaar Costumes. When an illness forced her to give up costume designing, Barb turned to writing. She is the author of three costuming books and several titles on recovery, alcoholism and addiction, and well-being, including: Twenty-Five Words, Keep It Simple and Sane, and Clutter-Junkie No More. Barb lives in Arizona with her husband and their two dogs.

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  Barb Rogers, If I Die Before I Wake