Break, Saturday May 4 through Wednesday, May 8, 2024: Fayetteville, Arkansas

In Sapiens, author Yuval Harari speculates that with the development of human’s cognitive capacity they invented Gods. I marvel at this, less because of Harari’s speculation than because my 102 year old father, Ace, began a conversation with this reflection. Cognitive capacity, my father has by the bushel of apples. Last fall, after Ace had a medical “incident” that took him to the ER, the attending doctor told me that Ace had “days to weeks” to live.

After long conversations with my siblings and the medical staff, we concurred that hospice care was appropriate. 

I was delegated the responsibility of telling him this. Fortunately, English is as flexible as an octopus, so in my conversation with Ace I merely explained that he needed an “elevated standard of care” (which hospice in fact is). When we moved him into the Willard Walker Hospice Home, I was worried that he would see that sign and think “So….my family is putting me in hospice. That can’t be good.” He didn’t see the sign.

Almost six months later, Ace is proving to be one tough apple. The doctor later reported that Ace had “weeks to months.” Still later, the question arose as to whether Ace even continued to qualify for hospice. Lucky for us, he still does so he is still receiving elevated care. 

The secret to Ace’s longevity is not really a secret. He has lived an unusually healthy life. He never was plagued by the demons of tobacco or booze; he might have a snifter of Grand Marnier on Christmas Eve, a flute of the bubbly on New Year’s day, and half of a six pack of beer a year. He has exercised regularly throughout his life (we finally had to move the rowing machine out of his apartment last fall after he fell off it a couple of times). On a recent visit he asked me to wheel him over to the wall of his room so he could use the safety bar there to do deep knee bends. Following Michael Pollan’s advice, he eats real food, and not too much. As a horticulturist, he has lived by the maxim “An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.” His biggest vice was ice cream and, really, that’s hardly a vice.

Good genes no doubt help, but they don’t determine. His sister Betty (aka Sister Mary Grace), who once was the Mother Superior of the Community of St. Mary, Episcopal, died last year at age 103. Yet his sister Carol died young, of alcohol abuse. Alcohol also killed his father when Ace was still a child, and he was orphaned.

My dad never talked about his father, as far as I can remember. I vaguely knew that alcohol had contributed to his death, and in the romantic telling I believed that he abused alcohol as he mourned for the loss of his young wife (who might also have had a drinking problem). In anguish, he drank himself to death.

I anguish, too, when I remember my past few years around my father. My father was – is – truly my role model. I don’t worship him, as I know he is also an imperfect man, yet my admiration for him knows no limits. In the bathroom of The Bungalows (where he was living) I would look in the mirror, knowing I was nowhere near so admirable and that so many of my choices were so far from the ones he made. In that mirror, I didn’t see the anguished poet (Poe), the swashbuckling hunter (Hemmingway), or the visionary artist (Joan Mitchell). I saw a drunk. A Bum.

Often, when I visited him, I would come with a bottle of vodka in my man purse. I would take a few slugs before I went in and then, when visiting with him, I might excuse myself so that I could go to the bathroom and take a few more. The self-loathing did not just come later. I would take a slug, swallow, look at the mirror, ask myself what I’m doing with my life, take another one, and then go back to his room. What I saw in the mirror was pathetic.

The crisis oozed out slowly, then rapidly, when I visited him last summer (2023). I got out of rehab in April and then spent a week in Turkey with Ayse. Returning to the states, I continued in an IOP while renting an efficiency apartment in Stowe, Vermont for a month, attending two AA meetings each day (by Zoom in Bethesda and in person in Stowe). That May was a healthy month for me. In addition to my IOP sessions I was training for a week-long bike trip with my buddy Ian which looped around Vermont, so I gradually built up my strength and endurance on the steep hills surrounding Stowe. In my spare time, I would read, explore the town, or watch movies. 

The bike trip was glorious. Ian and I rode in a clockwise loop from Vergennes through Burlington to St. Albans City, with views of Lake Champlain often glittering through the sugar maples and white pines. We then pedaled east through Enosburg Falls before heading south, riding through villages too small to make it on the map, subsisting mainly on gorp and whatever hamburgers we could find. The rides were long, for mid-60s riders, averaging about 45 up and down miles each day. The hills were steep enough for us often to dismount and push them. We stayed in small hotels and AirBnB; Ian had worked hard to find lodging, scarce as it was along our path. 

By the end of the ride I was strong, fit, confident. I hadn’t been taking antabuse while on the ride as I knew that, with Ian as my sidekick, we wouldn’t be drinking any of the beer from the local breweries (Vermont has more craft breweries, per capita, than any other state). However, on my rental car ride back to Bethesda, after the bike trip was over, I thought that, well, maybe I could buy just a half pint of vodka to enjoy in my hotel room. And I drank only that half pint, without going out for more. See? I’ve got this. Now, you might recall that I had just spent 45 days in rehab followed by a month of IOP. While in treatment I shuddered whenever I heard anyone giving their parting goodbyes to those being discharged (You’ve got this!) because I knew that maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but no one can say those words with much confidence. Nonetheless, I bought that first bottle.

I spent the first night back in Bethesda without drinking. The next day I was scheduled to fly to Arkansas. Through my own (sober) stupidity I missed my flight. I was plenty early, sat at the wrong gate while I was reading The Economist, and didn’t hear the calls to board. I was super annoyed yet didn’t drink over it. There is only one direct flight to Fayetteville each day, and I couldn’t get a reserved seat on the flight the next day; I was put on the standby list. I thought “I’ve got this” and rode the Metro home (Ayse was out of town). I remember thinking that, yes, I can face frustration and stay sober; I can deal with uncertainty (the standby list) and not drink. See, my recovery plan is working!

Not knowing whether or not I would be allowed to board, I arrived at the airport in plenty of time to be ready if my name was called. An airport bar was immediately next to my gate. I truly love airport bars. Everyone there is flying somewhere, and it seems they always have good stories to share, and it seems they are always willing to share them. They are coming home after a deployment in Iraq. They’re going to a destination wedding in Hawaii, so they are already wearing Hawaiian shirts and leis. They’re working for a startup, having a glass of wine, their computer-code filled laptops still open. They’re mourning the death of their father and yet dreading the thought of seeing their hostile siblings. So I thought, I’ve got stories too, and what better way to share them than over a beer. Or two. Or perhaps a third. Once I took that first sip I was, in the words of the alcoholic, “off to the races.”

I was going to be staying at a hotel in Fayetteville, as my brother and sister-in-law were off on vacation. I was miffed at my brother for not volunteering that I could stay at their house, even though I had sort of passively-aggressively hinted that I would like to stay there. (“I know you’re going to be out of town, so if  you want me to stay at your house to take care of your dog Hasty I’d be glad to do so. Or I can get a room; either way.”) Curt had not responded to this email (who knows if he even had read it) and, looking back, it’s hard for me to imagine why he would want me to stay alone in his home, with its ample supply of gin, wine, and beer. Anyway, the morning after I arrived I dropped by Crossover liquor to get just a pint before visiting Ace. 

A real alcoholic wouldn’t have bothered to buy such a small bottle. Right? That pint turned into two, three, and then more. On what was supposed to be my final night in Arkansas, I asked Ace what he wanted for dinner (I was getting takeout) and he asked for Italian. I wanted to try a new restaurant, which was out in the country. I arrived before the dinner was ready and sat at the bar to have a glass of wine while waiting. Restaurant bars are not as enticing to me as those at airports, but a drinker has to do what a drinker has to do. When I got back in my car, lasagna in hand, I felt super sleepy and so pulled into the parking lot of a nearby church for a quick nap. If the police found me sleeping in my car there they surely would have hauled me in. Seeing no flashing blue lights when I awoke – I think it was about 2 a.m. – I drove back to my hotel. 

When I got up in the morning, I couldn’t find my phone; it seems it fell out of my car when I was staggering into my room. I could see through my Find My Phone app that it was somewhere in the parking lot. I searched, to no avail. Later in the morning, I watched it on the Find app driving away, so someone must have picked it up and kept it (I never got it back).

My father asked me “What happened last night? Why didn’t you bring dinner?” I lied straight to his face, saying that I had in fact come by and he was sleeping too soundly for me to wake up (this lie, at least, was plausible). We spent most of the rest of the day together – I don’t remember, although I was undoubtedly keeping my blood alcohol level at a steady buzz level – and then I drove to the airport to fly back to DC. After I passed security, I relaxed on a lounge chair to take a quick nap before my flight. 

The next thing I know, a security guard is shaking me awake. The airport was deserted – I was the last one in the waiting area – and he told me that I had to leave because XNA was closing for the night. I couldn’t call an Uber, as I didn’t have my phone; fortunately, a taxi service inside the airport was just closing down and they could give me a ride. I asked the driver to take me to a nearby motel that was cheap. I got what I paid for, as a hooker was chatting with her john just outside the room next to mine. I slept only a few hours. Before going to sleep I sent an email to my wife explaining my plight. I can’t remember what excuse I used for missing my flight; I’m sure it wasn’t “I passed out in the airport.” Then, bad luck turns worse. I trip over my computer’s power cord, jerking it off the bed and crashing it on the floor. It could not be revived, so now I’m lacking both my digital devices. Somehow, I made it back to the airport.

Postscript May 7, 2025: That episode was the beginning of a relapse that was nasty, brutish, and short. It lasted one week, and things got rough and rougher. As of today I have been continuously abstinent for 683 days. I had the great good fortune of seeing Ace many, many, times in the coming year. During that year, I spent almost two months in Fayetteville, and I visited Ace on each of those days. We had great conversations, and I’m honored to have spent that time with him, and to be together with my family when he died in 2025.