The Wonder of It All
Life never runs out of surprises

   It was three o'clock in the morning, and I was in my kitchen drinking wine right from the bottle. It was 1998, the year that my younger brother, Ed, died from acute alcoholism. He was only forty-five years old. I was a sixty-three-year-old woman who drank every day. I didn't know how not to drink. I missed my brother very much, and I was angry and scared. You'd think that after watching Ed die such a painful death, any sane person would quit. But I wasn't anywhere near sane. I had five other brothers and only one of them had had a problem with his drinking. He had been in Alcoholics Anonymous for a while and now he didn't drink at all. I also had three grown sons who were able to drink like normal people. With all of these wonderful brothers and sons in my life, I still felt very much alone. I didn't deserve to have them come and visit. I had worried and hurt them so many times and they didn't want to watch me die, as they had watched Ed. In fact, no one came to see me much anymore. I wasn't pleasant to be around.

   I had been in AA in 1985 and stayed sober because I did what people in the Fellowship told me to do. But when my sponsor left town, I didn't bother to get another one. Gradually, I started missing meetings and stopped calling my AA friends. In fact, I started avoiding them. Slowly the insane thought that I could take a drink emerged. Relapse is not an event, it's a process, and it had begun when I spent an entire month playing with the idea in my head. Staying in my own head for too long is never a good idea. Predictably, the day came. I drank again, and it was worse than ever. The disease had progressed, even though I had not had a drink for twelve years. The next time you hear that--believe it!

   My sons' father had died, and I was divorced from my second husband. I had to take early retirement from my job because I had suffered a heart attack. No one needed me. I lived alone in a two-bedroom apartment. Every night, I prayed to God and asked him to please let me not wake up in the morning. But every morning I did wake up--and the first thing I had to do was have a drink. I never went to bed without being sure that I had something to drink during the night and in the morning. The first couple of swallows wouldn't stay down, and I just kept trying until it did.

   One day I decided that, at my age, there was no chance for me to have a life that was even tolerable. My sons had their own families, and I certainly wouldn't be missed. I had outlived my usefulness. Having reached these conclusions, I made the decision to end my life. God obviously wasn't going to do it for me, and it was taking too long to drink myself to death. The pain of it all was just too unbearable. I cut my wrist, and I was so drunk that I just sat down on the bathroom floor with my arm hanging in the tub. I passed out, not from the loss of blood but from the alcohol I had consumed.

   One of my sons found me like that. (What an unforgivable thing I had done, to put him through that.) Although I almost died, it took me over three years to get back where I belonged--in AA. In 2000, I decided to swallow my pride, face my shame, and go to a meeting. Perhaps God would give me another chance. I still felt hopeless. Even if I could stay sober at sixty-four, I felt that I had no reason to live. I certainly wasn't needed by anyone. But maybe I could, at least, make amends to the many people I had hurt along the away.

   By 2002, I was two years sober and much to my amazement, I was happy. I was going to a noon meeting every day, and sometimes I went to two meetings a day. I was sponsoring other women, getting on my knees and praying twice a day, meditating every day, reading the Big Book, and doing lots of service work--and I loved it. I had God back in my life, I was staying sober, I was staying busy, and my life no longer seemed pointless. I was also paying off my debts. The Promises were coming true for me and I felt truly blessed.

   However, God had even bigger and better plans for my life than I could ever have imagined. One day, as I was on my way to a meeting, I saw a very tall man with beautiful white hair. The sun was shining behind him and it looked as though he had a halo. I remember thinking, He has a head like an angel. We talked for a while and he told me that his name was Bobby.

   We became fast friends. We started going to meetings together, and sometimes we went out to eat afterward. When I began wondering if I was starting to care about him too much, I spoke to my sponsor about the way I felt, and she very much approved. In fact, she said, "You go, girl." I couldn't believe that. At my age and after what I had been through, I could actually fall in love again.

   At this time, I was asked to do a speaker meeting, and I was scared to death, but I just don't say no to Alcoholics Anonymous. Bobby drove me to the meeting and kept reassuring me that I would do well. About five minutes before the meeting, he took me out in the hall and, holding both of my hands in his, he prayed, asking God to help me to relax and just tell a room full of friends about my life in an honest and thorough way. Such a calm came over me, like a cool breeze. I thought to myself, I love this man. Later that night, he told me the same thing and asked me to marry him.

   We were married in November 2002 at 1:30 P.M.--just after the noon meeting where we first met. That was, after all, where all of our friends were. Everyone there was in Alcoholics Anonymous except for our children and my brothers. Even the minister who married us was in Alcoholics Anonymous. The flowers were brought in by members of Alcoholics Anonymous. The wedding cake was baked by a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. The songs that were sung, one before and one after the ceremony were sung by members of AA. Assorted food was brought in by members of AA. All of this was set up in thirty minutes, right after the meeting, along with many gifts and cards from AA friends.

   Our children and my brothers, who had never been to an AA meeting, were left almost speechless with the wonder of it all. They told us that they had never been anywhere, not to a family gathering, a wedding, or even a church, where there was such a show of love. One of my brothers said, "Jo, you can feel the love in here when you walk in the door. It's downright physical." They all said that they didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be the most memorable wedding they had ever attended.

   I myself am almost speechless at times when I think about what Alcoholics Anonymous has done in our lives. Here we are, now sixty-eight and seventy-five years old, with a life and a love that we never in a thousand years would have imagined. We have been married a year and a half now, and we still go everywhere together, we still hold hands when we walk together, we still go to a meeting every day, we still sponsor others, and we still get on our knees twice a day and thank God for all of it. (Getting back up from our knees isn't always as easy as getting down, but we're always there to help each other.)

   God has given us still another miracle. During the second month of our marriage, Bobby had to have lung surgery. There was no panic in Bobby that day. He said, "All of our AA family is praying for us, and I have turned this problem over to God, so whatever the outcomes is, it will be all right because it will be his will." Well, God did guide the hands of the surgeons who successfully removed Bobby's lung cancer.

I have gone from a life of such hopelessness that I wanted to die to a life that is full of love, happiness, spiritual fulfillment, and usefulness to others. How blessed we are, and how far we've come from believing there was no life worth living in our future.

Jo P. Charlotte, North Carolina

Copyright © The AA Grapevine, Inc. February 2005. Reprinted with permission.