I’m approaching, in a few months, my tenth “birthday” in recovery. Of course, I’ve been around 12-Step Programs since 1987, but have been clean from drugs and alcohol since July 1, 1998. And as I approach this milestone, I find myself thinking about those whom I knew and loved who didn’t make it. I don’t dwell a lot on former lovers, for so many reasons (chiefly the desire to focus so strongly on she who is my now-and-future). But there are some people whose skin I knew intimately and with whom I shared a private world who aren’t here anymore. It’s too painful to write about, but this poem captures some of what I feel when I think about them.
From a Survivor
The pact that we made was the ordinary pact
of men & women in those days
I don’t know who we thought we were
that our personalities
could resist the failures of the race
Lucky or unlucky, we didn’t know
the race had failures of that order
and that we were going to share them
Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special
Your body is as vivid to me
as it ever was: even more
since my feeling for it is clearer:
I know what it could and could not do
it is no longer
the body of a god
or anything with power over my life
Next year it would have been 20 years
and you are wastefully dead
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making
which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements
each one making possible the next
Hugo,
Congratulations on your upcoming milestone. I’ve had the privilege of attending a few 10th anniversary meetings for some friends, and I know that 10 years is a mark that few people are able to achieve.
Thanks, STF. I haven’t made it yet, mind you, but if I keep doing what I’ve been taught to do, it’s unlikely I’m going to end up with a bottle of Smirnoff and a handful of Percoset between now and midsummer.
Happy Birthday, Hugo! Keep comin’ back!