As a mom and recovered/recovering addict myself this article touched my heart.
by Dana Bowman
I’m sitting at my brother’s funeral this past winter, and my 4-year-old son keeps passing me his scribbles of rockets and trains. He tugs on my sleeve and whispers commentary about his drawings, and I smile tiredly as the funeral trudges on. It is a wretched experience, to bury a brother. He died at 52 from liver disease. Even more wretched is what the disease is code for: My brother was an alcoholic.
We stand to sing, and through a blur of tears my son’s pictures are gorgeous swashes of reds and violets.
I’m an alcoholic, too – now three years in recovery. I savor these days as they add up on my recovery app, and I announce them proudly at meetings. I track time and celebrate the milestones with chips. Sometimes the process is agonizing. Throughout it all, I am surrounded by a loud audience of children, whose only real goal in the day is to have fun with their Legos and make as much of a mess as possible.