Anniversaries

Today would have been my 26th wedding anniversary and I can’t help but think about what might have been for just a moment. I really have a lot of gratitude for that relationship mainly because it brought me to the program of Alanon.

We were very young and brought a lot of pain from our childhoods to the relationship. His father was an alcoholic and after his mother died from a brain tumor at eleven, his father drank non-stop for three years. When his father met his wife to be, he got sober. My husband had a lot of anger towards his dad for the drinking years and when his dad got sober he felt guilty that he didn’t accept the new person his dad had become. With this pain my husband drank and that increased until it ultimately destroyed our relationship.

He moved on and I was left to deal with my own issues. The death of my mother at eleven had the same effects on me and I lost my father to grief and the choices he made in his own grief. I can understand that now how when you’re in pain and you don’t have a support system that you do anything that makes you feel better regardless of how that affects anyone around you. Grief is not rational and cannot be controlled it must run its course. I have experience this myself and know that you do the best you can until it is over.

I know today that he really did love me and I also know that there was nothing that I could have done to change the effects of alcoholism on him. Not that I didn’t try everything before ultimately surrendering my will and my life.

In the early years we never really had enough money for him to give me roses for our anniversary with it being so close to Valentines so he always bought me tulips. So I have always had a fondness for tulips for this reason.

So where ever he is today he is part of my story. The story that changed my life forever and I wish him love and peace on our anniversary.