Update on the Friend and .. I'm not sure

Alcohol in the mix messes up everything.

How true that statement is on any level you choose. P's struggle hits too close to home, as Jude and I talked about. What she hopes for the most is that he takes the wake up call and does more than simply detox... that his body can withstand the straing of detox as he does rehab from the stroke and they work to stabilize whatever is happening with his heart. That, in fact, his liver isn't too far gone.

We hope he will choose to do the emotional work that is necessary to help his son. I know the anger of the child with an adored parent who has always been a drinker. My mom was an alcoholic long before I came along. Jude knows this well. Her mom didn't really start drinking constantly until after her dad was killed, when Jude was a senior and P. in eighth grade. But he started drinking then and never stopped, so his son has that.

Our parents were the closet drinkers. The quiet, sad drunks who fell asleep for far to many hours. Numb too much of the time. Yet they loved us and we knew it. They spent magical times with us. P. was like that for his son. There was magic and joy, not simply pain. And most of the time, he functioned, as did my mom. It wasn't until I was a teenager that the scales tipped in the other way. So, too, it has been for P's son.

My brother, Jack. The one who protected me — not Jim. He began at fourteen to drink, like Pete. His children have never faced the truth and rumor has it that my Jack died of Tylenol poisoning. I guess the twisted, bottle-shaped brown bags were not a clue. Jack's family kept up the denial until, seven years after his death, his widow asked me why he began drinking after our mother died. When I seemed shocked, she said she was surprised when they said he had alcohol poisoning, that this had destroyed his liver because it happened so fast. When I told her he'd been drinking and drugging since he was fourteen, she went, "Oh, I never knew. Now it makes sense." Denial is the killer as much as the alcohol sometimes...

But our P, now has a chance. The truth is out and he has the chance to make things better.

And I know firsthand that most of us, where there has been love and we know it ... most of us simply want our parent back. I had no idea how little it would take for the healing for me to be complete. Like P's son, I tried desperately for the family to see the truth. I was in my mother's face. He was in his dad's. We tried to tell others, anyone who would listen. Nothing happened and our family's tried all the harder to shut us up.

But I had honesty with my mother, more than the others did. And so does P's son. A history of trying to have the truth be truly heard. It was enough. It was everything.

After years of my telling myself that I would let my mother KNOW what she did, that I would not let her off the hook if she ever had the guts to stop... after years of rage and then cold detachment, all it took was this:

Mom went through the DT's alone, month after I confronted her for the final time. A month after I walked out of the filth and the whining and the screaming, saying simply, "Let GOD clean your house. I'm done." That is another story.

But when she was detoxed, she called one day to say she had gone to the doctor and knew that she was dying from a shot liver. Then she asked whether I'd meant it that if she ever got real I would be there.

I said, "YES, Mom."

I went to her house and sat across a card table from her. Both legs were so swollen she'd had to cut the calves of her pants. "I am an alcoholic. Please find every bottle you can and stick them in front of my face."

I did. There were fourteen that Jack and I had missed just before Easter. She sighed. "I really haven't been drinking for three weeks..."

"Ma, these are completely encrusted in dust. I see that. Don't worry about it."

Sigh. "I've been an alcoholic since World War II."

Click. Half of me seemed to relax, yet I could feel my teeth chattering.

"I did things I'm ashamed of and I took them out on you..." Big child-tears escaped down my cheeks.

Then she asked, "Did your brother Jim hurt you?"

My eyes flew open. Here it was.

NOW she would know just what she had done. Now, I could pay her back for — something broke inside, and instead of the torrent, what escaped was just a whisper. "Yes, Mom, he did. Do you want to know any more?" I saw my mother lift her head, open wide the tear-filled eyes and look me full in the face.

"Only if you need to tell me, dear. Go ahead." The rage was gone. The anger. All of it. Gone. My mother had set me free, all by herself, unbidden, with ten small words. Like a dove, she flew back into my world, bringing only peace.

"It's okay, Mom. It's okay now." And we reached for one another's hands across the table, eyes locked together, for a very long time.

This I wish for P's son. Nothing more, because it's everything.