Two Lives: An Addiction Story

When my dad had to write two versions of his obituary for an AA exercise, in one version he died of a heart attack at age 78. He saw his grandkids and wrote a novel and helped others beat alcoholism.

In the other, more accurate version, he died when I was 14. In truth, I was 15 and he never met his two beautiful grandchildren or the amazing bonus grandkid he would have had so much fun laughing and singing with. He never became whole and his absence left a wide, unfillable hole.

I thought it was appropriate to share these two (slightly edited) versions of his obituaries to wrap my #NationalRecoveryMonth posts.

Addiction takes so much not only from the people who suffer from it but from their family and friends. No words or advice I could share could speak as loudly as these two different versions of my dad’s life.