Print his addiction and so he did.  After the first service, Dad was saying goodbye and shaking hands with parishioners when a couple introduced themselves.  She was the head of the parsonage committee; he was on the Board of Trustees.  They were also refugee farmers from the civil rights years.  Because of the work Dad had done, they had to give up their farm and start over elsewhere.  They calmly told Dad he would be gone within the year and started their campaign.  One year later they had succeeded in having him blackballed from the ministry because of his drinking.  When they cleaned out the parsonage, they carried out bag after bag after bag of empty bottles.  He hadn’t even bothered to hide it.  I was eighteen.  It would be the last real job he would ever have of any consequence or duration. 

Dad’s drinking escalated.  While Mom was an alcoholic too, she was a functional one.  She supported the family, worked her butt off and made things work even when they seemed hopeless.  Meanwhile Dad retreated more and more, becoming a permanent fixture in his chair.  He would take whatever money he could get his hands on to support his habit.  Mom would go crazy. 

These were the rehab years.  He must have gone to 5 or 6 of them.  At first Mom would call me in California and ask me what to do (I had a few years of sobriety by that point).  But she got the hang of it quick.  As my Dad was a counselor and an extremely intelligent person, he helped everyone there except himself.  He was good at faking it.  There was no interest in attending Alcoholics Anonymous.  My parents went once.  They said that the garbage man went as if that explained everything.  For them it did.  I would drag Dad to A.A. when I would visit but it meant nothing to him.  He just had no desire to stop drinking.

It is easy for me to laugh based on all I would hear from home.  I was 3,000 miles away from home.  One time Dad tripped and stabbed himself in the chest.  Another time he tripped over a hassock and broke his neck.  He had to wear a body halo for a few months.  It wasn’t funny – but it was priceless.

Dad went blind when he turned 40.  It was in part genetics, part drinking on antibuse, part vitamin B deficiency.  Slowly but surely his vision blurred around the edges and closed in on itself.  His body was going through similar changes.   Things weren’t working the way they used to.  Although this is true of everyone as they age, there was a steep drop-off for Dad.  Mom controlled every aspect of his life.  She forced him to eat when all he wanted to do was drown in the dregs of his despair.  She was the quintessential care-giver and enabler.  She moved them out of town and up on the hill, making it too hard to get to a package store.  Damn him if he didn’t try to walk down, blind, with horribly shot knees, for that unquenchable thirst and need for more alcohol.

By the time Dad turned fifty, his mind started to go.  I always thought he had pickled his body, he must have pickled his brain too.  It should have stayed in stasis . . . not growing but not degrading either.  It seemed too mean on such a keenly intelligent person.  For the first years I would talk to him as I always had – he was the one family member I was myself, was honest with.  And now it fell on uncomprehending ears.  I read him my writings – he was the only member of the family who had ever encouraged me.  In fact, he was the only one who would listen to me.  I guess, in a different way, my words were falling on deaf ears as well.

Mom took wonderful care of Dad.  She enlarged the house, making a bedroom/living room on the first floor so he would not have to use stairs.  His movements were herky-jerky and tentative.  He was terrified of the slate path out front as it was slippery when wet.  Mom hired a live-in caregiver to help with him.  They went to the senior center for lunch a couple of days a