Now then, obviously I did not die from alcohol poisoning so let's get back to my new life at New Life, shall we? In October I moved into a transition apartment with a wonderful girl named Allison. I thought she was one of the neatest people I had ever met. She worked at the Jackson Zoo, loved all animals and was in recovery from heroin addiction. She had been in transition for several months so she showed me the ropes.
We were expected to have a job and, thank the good Lord, I was temping in the office of a box manufacturing plant instead of sorting dirty panties at Goodwill. But, as I said, my stint at Goodwill was a humbling experience and it made me much more appreciative of an inside job with air conditioning. We had group 2 nights per week and they could go on for hours. Nothing like a bunch of women trying to get and stay clean living together! I've always wondered if mens treatment centers had the “hen fights” like I've seen in every womens treatment center I've ever been in. If you had taken away our coffee and cigarettes it would probably have gotten pretty ugly pretty quick. Somebody would have left “tow up from the flow up”!
But group nights were also extremely beneficial to us as clients trying to live a real life as sober women. Hearing the stories recounted by our counselors and more experienced peers helped me avoid a lot of pitfalls. The road to recovery is made of broken, uneven pieces of stone where, if you are not very careful and aware of your surroundings, you will fall every time. I used to hate to see clients leave treatment early thinking they had it all figured out. With extremely few exceptions they wound right back in treatment again. Maybe not at New Life but somewhere, IF they were lucky. Some never made it back. While we are in recovery our disease of addiction is out there going to the gym every day, doing push-ups, lifting weights, going to spin classes and if you relapse it comes back to you a much stronger addiction than ever before. Yes, if you relapsed you were considered fortunate and blessed to make it back to treatment.
During my days in transition I was able to get passes every other weekend and I was able to go and stay with my mother. What a blessing that our relationship was fully restored. Only God could have done that. But I began to notice on my weekends home with Mom that she would tell me a story about something that had happened or someone who had experienced something. Then a minute or two later she would retell the story as if it were the first time she told it. I also noticed that when she would make a grocery list out for me to go shopping for her that her handwriting had become very messy and she often misspelled words. This progressed to having to play what I called “grocery charades”. She would not remember the name of an item or even what it was used for. I would start guessing from the clues she was giving. Sometimes we figured it out and sometimes we didn't. No longer could I deny that something was going on mentally with my mother.
I took off work one day to take her to her physician. He asked a series of questions. He did some other tests and confirmed my worst nightmare. Mom was in the early stages of late-onset Alzheimer's Disease. She had just turned 80.
At about this same time I was offered the job of executive assistant at New Life. Of course I jumped at the chance to work in a place that was really like my home. There was no weirdness about my counselors suddenly becoming my co-workers. It was a dream come true for me! The only problem was that it went against regulations that I live in transitional housing as an employee of New Life. The apartments are HUD funded and have strict guidelines about who can live there. I was really anxious about what I was going to do. Getting an apartment on my own would be expensive, I didn't really have anyone I could ask to move in as a roommate and I knew that I could not move back in with my mom in that apartment. I had used drugs in that apartment. The couple of days I would spend with her on pass when I was in transition I could get through. But the thought of living there on a permanent basis scared the hell out of me! And, to make matters worse, I used to buy pills from the girl who lived upstairs and she still lived there. No, moving back there was not an option
Things went from bad to worse very quickly. She would argue with me about a simple 3 ingredient recipe for a pie we had both made for years. It was Roberts favorite so we made it often. She insisted that you put shredded cheese in the pie instead of the cream cheese in the recipe. The repetition of stories or requests were much more frequent.
Mother had also been a smoker since she was 14 years old and suffered from COPD. She had a terrible bout with it which caused her to faint. Thank goodness I was there when it happened. I immediately called an ambulance and she was admitted with a very serious case of bronchitis. By this time we were seeing a geriatric specialist who made sure we were not admitted through the emergency room but were taken directly to admission. With breathing treatments every 2 – 3 hours and IV antibiotics we were able to go home in a couple of days.
It became apparent that my mother was not going to be able to live alone anymore. I still could not see myself moving back in with her at that apartment. Too many ghosts of my past still. Stacey and I talked about it and we decided to get a 3 bedroom apartment so that we could all live under one roof. The house Stacey and I were in was too small really and we were ready for a change. And, believe me, changes were ahead.
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