Not Dead & Not For Sale Read Free Page A

His voice was crying pain.”
    From there, I wrote another ten pages, raw words flowing out of the ink like a bad, black dream.
    I turned in the paper and the teacher understood. That’s all I could write. I’d memorized my father’s words, but couldn’t repeat them: “Craig was riding a wheelie. You know how he’s the best wheelie rider around. He didn’t see the car coming. It hit him head-on. His brain is swelling. There’s a hole in his brain. They’re operating tonight.” I couldn’t repeat what my father said when he called the next morning: “Craig’s dead.” I couldn’t describe my memories of how, for week after week, month after month, year after year, Dad would take me and Craig dirt-bike riding.
    I couldn’t say anything when I visited Dad that summer. He was completely remote and removed from me. I couldn’t tell him—couldn’t tell anyone—about the feelings overwhelming me. I was angry, guilty, sad, resentful, longing to have my father back. I was covered with confusion.
    FATHERS AND SONS, SONS AND BROTHERS.
    Craig was my brother, and even though he wasn’t Dad’s blood son, I know that when Craig died, part of Dad died with him. That’s a part of my father I’ve never been able to reach. Much later in life when my brother Michael died, part of me disappeared and has never returned. It hurts to love.

    Leaping for the stars

N O ONE TURNS YOU INTO A DRUG ADDICT OR DRUNK . The blame game is pointless and harmful. I don’t believe in pointing fingers. We do what we do and are responsible for our own actions. I don’t believe we are victimized by circumstance. There are, however, stories to be told. The story does not begin with us, but rather our parents, and our parents’ parents. The story goes back further than we know or can even imagine. Our stories are linked together because we share this space on the planet. We influence one another, whether we like it or not.
    I love my mother. Without doubt she’s been my biggest supporter—true, loving, and loyal. She’s an independent woman who has always held down well-paying professional jobs. She’s smart, understanding, and kind. She’s also identified herself as an alcoholic.
    When I was a preteen and still living in Cleveland, my stepfather took our family to a Cavaliers basketball game. We sat in the private box owned by TRW, his employer, that had leather seats and a fully stocked bar. After the game was over, Dave went into my mother’s purse to look for something. He discovered a bottle of vodka that Mom was stealing from the bar. That’s how she was busted.
    She had hit bottom—or enough of a bottom for her to feel remorse and respond honestly. She admitted her problem. In front of Dave, me, and Michael, she started crying. She said she was a loser. We cried even louder and said, “Mom, you’re not a loser. We love you.”
    At the time, I didn’t know the meaning of alcoholism. All I knew was that Mom was calling herself a horrible mother, and I knew that wasn’t true. I knew she cared for us deeply. I watched her join a twelve-step program that she followed diligently. She didn’t drink for some twenty-five years, and only started again after she learned that both her sons were heroin users. She slipped, as I have slipped, as I come from a long line of slippers. My uncle—Mom’s brother—was an alcoholic and coke addict. My grandparents—Mom’s mother and father—were hard-core alcoholics. Booze runs wild in my family.
    JERRY JEFF WALKER SANG A SONG called “Jaded Lover.” I heard it for the first time during one of those summers that I spent with my biological father, Kent. Dad could sing like Jerry Jeff; he could also sound like George Strait. His voice was resonant and deep and full of warmth. In a strange way, when I listened to the lyrics of “Jaded Lover”—“Well, it won’t be but a week or two … you’ll be out lovin’ someone new”—I thought of the troubled relationship between me and