I'm not being judgmental. I’m not even sure I'd do differently. I'm just posing the questions, pondering the implications, wondering out loud to the intellectual void of the Facebook uber web.
She was a beautiful, gifted, vibrant soul. She had the looks, the supple athletic body, the winsome smile. She could sketch, design, and write. She had an engaging infant child and an equally troubled husband. Like him, her other (private) self held court with a terrible addiction to ethanol.
Perhaps she did die in her sleep. This could happen if a brain and body poisoned with alcohol wafts off into some peaceful exotic dreamscape before death's icy fingers rip the life and soul from this mortal coil. And that's what the obituary said, didn't it? "She died in her sleep." Tragically, that sleep rode in on a slurry of alcohol.
It makes me wonder: Why tarnish the good name of the dead? Why have such an ugly disease be given a place next to the good that a person was?
Doesn't it make it all the more sinister and ugly to push it out of sight? Doesn't it make it more difficult to admit that the very best of us need help and compassion? Doesn't it trivialize the problem and pass it off as no big deal? And when it's no big deal, don't those living with the demons of their addictions justifiably push the realities of their problem out of sight as if it was no big deal and the happy facade was all that mattered?
I suspect we collectively add to the problem when we cannot be open to the fact that addiction exacts a heavy toll and affects many more than we ever acknowledge. May we all die in our sleep, and when we don't, may we all have the courage to face our demons in life and perhaps even in death.
Loren M. Lambert © May 24, 2013
She was a beautiful, gifted, vibrant soul. She had the looks, the supple athletic body, the winsome smile. She could sketch, design, and write. She had an engaging infant child and an equally troubled husband. Like him, her other (private) self held court with a terrible addiction to ethanol.
Perhaps she did die in her sleep. This could happen if a brain and body poisoned with alcohol wafts off into some peaceful exotic dreamscape before death's icy fingers rip the life and soul from this mortal coil. And that's what the obituary said, didn't it? "She died in her sleep." Tragically, that sleep rode in on a slurry of alcohol.
It makes me wonder: Why tarnish the good name of the dead? Why have such an ugly disease be given a place next to the good that a person was?
Doesn't it make it all the more sinister and ugly to push it out of sight? Doesn't it make it more difficult to admit that the very best of us need help and compassion? Doesn't it trivialize the problem and pass it off as no big deal? And when it's no big deal, don't those living with the demons of their addictions justifiably push the realities of their problem out of sight as if it was no big deal and the happy facade was all that mattered?
I suspect we collectively add to the problem when we cannot be open to the fact that addiction exacts a heavy toll and affects many more than we ever acknowledge. May we all die in our sleep, and when we don't, may we all have the courage to face our demons in life and perhaps even in death.
Loren M. Lambert © May 24, 2013
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