Megan's Story

Megan and Ravi

Addiction was my adversary in my marriage. I loved a man with alcoholism. I was in

a tug of war with a disease for sixteen years. Of course, I lost. It wasn’t my battle to win. I

couldn’t do that for my husband. Neither could he do it for himself. He died last summer.

I’ve been told the second year of grief is worse than the first. That it’s in the second

year of grief the loss of your person sinks in. The irreversibility of it. The permanence. The

acceptance. I’m not sure that’s how it’ll be for me though. I’m just starting my second year of

grief and rather than a void that’s opening wider, I feel like grief has grown into my body, a

part of me like my blood and bones. If you’re talking to me, I’m listening. But I’m also

thinking: Ravi’s gone; my husband’s gone forever. I’m here without him.

I’m alive.

I found my husband dead in his car, parked in front of a bar just a few miles from our

home. He’d been missing for a day. I hadn’t thought to look for him there; he’d stopped going

to that bar. He left home the morning before and by evening I called the police. Come by

tomorrow and file a missing person’s report, they said. I was there the moment they opened.

After filing the report, as I drove toward home, I had the thought to drive by that bar he'd

sworn off the year before. His car was parked on the busy street in front.

I thought he was asleep, like I’d seen him sleep thousands of other times, dark

eyelashes resting on cheeks, lips curved into the tiny bow I loved to kiss, a peace over him I

rarely saw when he was awake. But then I touched him; he was cold and dry. The world

became quiet and there was only us. I asked him: why, why, why. I watched the paramedics

look for life when I knew there wasn’t any. I watched him being removed from his car, stiff

and fragile, and loaded into a van. My last sight of him.

Acceptance of his death has not been an issue. His irrevocable absence is a quiet hole

in my world. Quiet because his alcoholism was so loud. It died with him that day in his car

having pinned my husband down with oblivion until heatstroke ended him. The disease killed

its host. But it didn’t kill me.

I fell in love with a man with alcoholism. He was my person, my partner, my lover,

my best friend, and my home. I knew I’d eventually lose him, not the way we usually expect to, to old age or illness, but to alcoholism. His death was not unexpected. I knew eventually in our battle it would win, and I would lose. Ravi knew it, too. He knew he couldn’t win. And still, his death shocked me. Not yet. Please not yet.

I spent sixteen years losing a gun fight with alcoholism, trying to keep death out of our

home. And still I wouldn’t trade a moment of the life we had together. His alcoholism wasn’t

who he was. It was something he had, didn’t want, and couldn’t live without. It didn’t wreck

our marriage, and it didn’t wreck me. I found the tools I needed in Al Anon. There, I learned

to live with alcoholism in someone I loved. I learned it was okay to love someone with

alcoholism. I learned I could have a good day whether he was drinking or not, whether his day

was good or not. I learned to put the focus on myself. I learned to pause. I learned to take the

next indicated action. I learned where my feet are. I learned to leave him the dignity of his

own experience. After eleven years together, I married Ravi in 2019, not because he told me

he had a plan to manage his drinking. I married him because I loved him and wanted a life

with him even if he never stopped drinking.

My decade in Al Anon didn’t make me immune to his drinking. There were plenty of

times I threw out bottles of vodka only to quickly dig them out of the trash. Plenty of times I

forgot I couldn’t cure or control alcoholism. Plenty of times I knew better than to comment

but did anyway. Each time I was reminded I wouldn’t get the outcome I wanted, for him to

say “You’re right! Drinking is stealing my life. I’ll get help. I’ll stop.” He never said that. He

never could. What did he say? Keep your focus on yourself. You know where else I heard

that? Al Anon.

I didn’t die. I’m alive. I grieve the loss of my love and best friend, and I wake up

interested in each new day, full of hope for more learning, more love, more life. It took me a

while to put the gun down. To stop rushing home because I worried he’d fallen down the

stairs or burned the house down. My vigilance unwound. My adversary is gone, took my

husband, and left me indelibly altered. I lost the “we” that we were, and the life we shared, the

phrases we used only with each other, and our possibilities for the future. I lost the life I

thought I’d have with him.

But I’m still me. My story is still being written.