So Max and I are trying to make some plans to go out of town next week for the anniversary of Sarah’s death. We’ll be going up to New Jersey, down the shore as they say there. I’m trying to keep my expectations low.
We went “down the shore” for several years before Sarah was born, and did things like wandering through the Atlantic City casinos, going to the movies, walking on the boardwalk, and of course spending time on the beach. Eating soft custard and pizza and cheesesteaks and stuff like that. Listening to Bruce Springsteen.
Our vacation week will also be Max’s 6th sobriety anniversary on August 15th, so I should find a way to celebrate that, maybe take him out for a nice dinner. He had a long period of sobriety from the time he was a teenage alcoholic, through adulthood, over 20 years, and then he got addicted to opioid pain pills for his back pain. I didn’t really know he was having this issue. It’s amazing how much you can make yourself oblivious to or rationalize away on a day-to-day basis.
I remember he would sleep so deeply it was impossible to wake him up. I’d be shouting his name and he wouldn’t waken. Sometimes he would have fallen asleep sort of half on and half off the bed. I would just think, “Oh my poor husband was so tired he could hardly make it to bed.” It never ocurred to me that he was abusing pain pills. His back and his neck hurt and he needed medication. Of course, this was how hundreds of people got addicted to opioids.
I feel bad that I never sensed anything wrong on my own. I finally found out about his opioid addiction when he lost his job due to a bizarre series of events. Max started confiding in his office-mate (let’s call her Jane) about his addiction and depression and writing her emails about it. This was 2017 and it was during the Me Too movement. Jane told her superiors she was being harassed by Max and his company fired him for harassment. He had to come home and explain to me being fired for harassment of Jane, why he was emailing Jane that he wanted to throw himself in front of a Metro Train, and then tell me he wanted to go to Rehab for opioid addiction. It was a lot, and I mean a lot, for me to absorb. There was some other stuff I’m not going to get into here, but it was a pretty bad time in our relationship.
Max went to rehab and he’s been sober since 2017 and he goes to AA meetings every day now. We also went to marriage counseling to deal with the fallout of all this crap and decided we wanted to keep trying together. And we have.
I wish sometimes lately I could take pain pills for my grief. When I was in the hospital with meningitis they gave me Versed and morphine and I just was out like a light. No worries, no thoughts, just sleeping. That seems very appealing. There should be a pain pill for grief. But there isn’t.
The First Year Without Sarah 