I wrote this tribute almost exactly two years ago, on 2/20/11. I held it for editing and it slipped away from me. I am resurrecting it now because it reminds me of why I do service. Remembering is part of my recovery from serving in Afghanistan. Remembering is a part of reconnecting with myself- who I was, who I became.
The best stories can't be told.
And the ones that can will become the stuff of legend.
Amidst the historical and all-encompassing uprisings in the Middle East, the passing of a remarkable man yesterday went unnoticed.
When Bill found me many years ago, I was just 21 years old. My worn out underwear was safety-pinned together and the hem of my skirt was held up by scotch tape. I had ulcerative colitis from having consumed, in a few short years, copious quantities of scotch, when I could afford it, and Ripple, when I could not. Dirty, diseased, and afraid, I had spent almost every night of the previous three years vomiting up the night's activities and praying to die. My small apartment had not been cleaned for a year and the dishes filling the sink had become rusty and molded. To this day, I am not quite sure of the mechanics of cheap porcelain dishes rusting...
Bill taught me the value of service, dragging me to AA meetings all over L.A. and West Hollywood, insisting that I, and a cadre of misfits whom he sponsored, earn our stripes by setting up the chairs before each meeting and taking them down afterward, sweeping the floors, making the coffee, and, worst of all nightmares, greeting people as they came in the door. I felt unworthy to do the first few tasks and unable to do the last. I had to go up to the podium at Gramercy Place to accept my 30-day sobriety chip, praying that no one noticed that, in my terror, I had peed my pants.
Some come into AA and "get it" right away. They clean up, find god, and become circuit speakers. And then there were "Bill's Babies"- the mavericks, the recidivists, and the miscreants. His first acolyte, Tommy O., used to climb up onto the roof and howl at the moon. And this was sober. People just glanced sideways at Bill and the rest of us at that time, shaking their heads in sad agreement that we didn't stand a chance.
I spent the time between meetings (as my good friend Dave recently reminded me) painting my fingernails, a task that took painstaking effort and filled enough hours to get me to the next meeting. My hands shaking so badly, I would start at the knuckle just above the nail and work my way down. Finished with the painting, I would carefully, with unsteady hands, take a Q-tip dipped in polish remover and remove all the excess from the knuckle to the nail bed. I haven't worn nail polish since then. Along those same lines, Bill would send a couple of his sponsees to one of the busy intersections on Wilshire Boulevard to count cars, knowing they needed a task to sustain them to the next meeting and were incapable of much else. But they have their own stories to tell.
Bill explained the concept of service to me. He told me that there would come a time when everything and everyone would fail me, the people, the program, even god (with whom Bill had issues and of whom Bill had doubts, although he was one of the most spiritual men I would ever meet) would fail me, and the only thing that would save my life is saving someone else's (because, in the end, the only life we really ever save is our own). He warned me that, if service did not become second nature, I would not be able to fall back on it when the time came.
Service is the genius of the AA program. All we have as recovering drunks, our greatest contribution to the newcomers, is our experience, strength, and hope. And so we sit in meetings and talk about ourselves in the hopes that someone just coming in will identify with our histories and find enough in common to conquer his or her own fears and come back to another meeting. The danger in this approach is the tendency to become myopic and self-absorbed, as we go on and on ad nauseum about how difficult our sobriety is, how screwed up our relationships are, how cruel our bosses are, how little the world understands about us, and so on. So the founders gave us service, the opportunity to rise above our tragic little lives by reaching out to help another drunk, which can be extrapolated to simply helping anyone who has it a little worse than we do. And someone always does.
And, in watching Bill's devotion to his fellow drunks, I got it. Bill could be harsh and irreverent, and people did not seek him out until desperate, fearful of his often brutal directness. He could be tough; but he was rarely wrong. He told me once that everyone is screaming for justice when we all should be begging for mercy. Bill had a fondness for women and the ponies but, independent of those occasional excesses (although even those were often intertwined in his message somehow), everything he did was calculated to be instructive. On one occasion, he insisted his group of grown, gruff, cynical disciples go with him to see the movie, Bad News Bears. I wish I had been there to see the look on their faces as they shared the ticket line with noisy, eager 9 and 10 year olds. There was a message in there, you see. Things that seemed so simple always took on a deeper and more profound significance with Bill.
I watched and learned. And service I did. Service, in its different forms, sustained me through the death of my alcoholic father in my early sobriety, just at the point when I began, through my own alcoholism and recovery, to understand and forgive. Service sustained me through the collapse of my very brief marriage and the subsequent death of my ex-husband, who loved me with a depth of which I was incapable, and who gave me a quirky, bright, and magnificent child.
As a single parent, fearful but no longer pissing my pants, I started college at the age of 31. I never went earlier because I never thought I was bright enough. I lost track of Bill during that time; he had relocated to New York and I moved forward in my life. I graduated college summa cum laude and was accepted at almost every graduate program I applied to. After graduate school, I turned down an opportunity to do a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard because I felt my son, who had been dragged around from place to place to serve my needs, deserved a chance to finish his adolescence in a small, lovely community in the Bay Area. And they were the best of times. I was consumed with my fascinating academic research and my house was always filled with a core group of bright, unconventional, and charming adolescent boys with whom Joel could finally experience a sense of true belonging. I had lost touch with Bill and, as a single parent and academic researcher, service work would have been a luxury I simply could not afford in those years. But I never, not for one minute, forgot who I was, where I started, and who gave me that chance.
About 5 years into our time in northern California, I met a guy in the gym who said he got sober quite some years earlier in Santa Monica. I asked him if he had heard of Bill. His lip curled into an unpleasant snarl as he replied, "that's the bastard who made a move on my wife (by then ex-wife)." I said, "yeah, that would be Bill. Do you have his contact info?" I never got a response. Everyone loves a tragic and flawed hero (except ex-husbands, perhaps), because the hope is fostered that, as damaged as we are, we too can aspire to greatness. Bill, roguishly handsome and equally charismatic, had several wives over the years, and at least twice that many girlfriends (again, the best stories can't be told); however, Sheri, the pretty young redhead who looked like a ballerina, had to have been the most significant of his loves. At one time or another, it seemed everyone in LA AA had lived with Bill and Sheri for a period of time in their recovery. Even me. And he lost her, tragically, to relapse and, eventually, to a fatal overdose. And Bill carried on, helping more drunks get sober.
And one day, that time came for me- the day Bill was talking about- when it all collapses around your feet. On November 18, 2003, as I was negotiating a faculty position in Arizona, my magnificent son, who had gone off to serve in the Army Reserves, suffered a sudden and fatal heart attack. My darkest hour had arrived and sitting in a corner eating Valium had been taken off the table those many years ago. My only option was to go right through the center of it. My son's friends stepped up and put together a memorial service, knowing I did not have the emotional strength or will to do so myself. My colleagues at work, and from academic institutes around the country who knew me, served as a source of support, with emails, cards, and flowers. And, when color started to come back to my world and my legs were no longer shaky, I knew exactly what to do. I stood up, brushed myself off, looked at life square on, and said, bring it on. I knew I had taken the worst that life would ever deal me, and I had persevered. And in gratitude, remembering my roots, knowing how and why I persevered, I kicked into gear. I turned down the faculty position, joined the Peace Corps, and went to Africa to do HIV outreach and education. I was sent to the country with the highest HIV prevalence in the world- 38.6% of the adult population was HIV positive. And when we landed on the ground, treatment was a pipe dream.
Three years watching Africa die puts everyones' difficulties in perspective. My loss was nothing compared to years of suffering followed by the agonizing, senseless deaths that Africa experiences. Joel's death was quick, and probably relatively painless. In Africa I sat with mothers as they watched their 18 and 20 year olds die from AIDS-related cancers, pneumonia, and TB, without the benefit of medication to ease their pain.
In 2007, I returned to California and went in search of Bill. I wanted to share my story and to thank him for giving me the tools I needed to survive, tools I have passed on to anyone who is struggling and is seeking succor. Stay sober, do service. I posted notes on the Bulletin Boards of AA meetings with my phone number, hoping someone would call with information about him. And they did. We had a wonderful reunion before I was off again- this time to Mongolia for a year to help set up HIV programming for commercial sex workers and at-risk youth. I saw Bill again this August, as he was recovering in the hospital from removal of a large pancreatic tumor, as well as the removal of his spleen and part of his colon. I received the rare and highly coveted "attagirl". Finally, I saw Bill again this week, privileged to be included with a his two adoring neices, a couple long-time AA colleagues, and his fiercely loyal and devoted friend Mark, as we sat with him on his final journey. Mark, who credits his 22 years of sobriety to Bill, was with him in those last few minutes yesterday, as the rest of us gave them the room, and I can only imagine the difficult journey he took with Bill in those last moments. Returning to the room, I kissed Bill's lifeless cheek and whispered "thank you" in his unhearing ear. Within an hour I was in my old pickup truck, making the long drive back to Arizona.
I woke up this morning, unable to lift myself from my air mattress bed, in this little house in this magic place where I have finally set down roots. But, as I wrote to one of my dearest friends here, "The cries of hungry birds have coaxed me from the safety of my sheets, where i had hoped to remain until a better picture of the world presented itself. The sun is slowly emerging from behind dark clouds, reminding me that light follows dark as much as life follows death. I could have stayed in bed forever, comforter over my head, your [gift] under my pillow. But, once again, i find myself in a position where i have to take a deep breath, puff up my frightened little chest, face life with a bravery i don't really possess, and silently shout out into the void, 'bring it on.'"
As with my son's death, I don't know why the earth doesn't implode to fill such a tremendous vacuum. But, as long as it doesn't, I will be out there doing service for whatever time is left to me and spreading the gospel of Bill.
godspeed, bill.
give me your poor
your maladjusted
your sick and your beat
and your sad and your busted
give me your has-beens
give me your twisted
your loners your losers
give me your black-listed.
lyrics by Dory Previn from Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign
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