Last month I shared the upside of OG's recent 50th high school reunion. Today I'm tackling the darker side.
This is a story of six men, OG and his closest boyhood friends. Several of them had known each other since kindergarten. They were a diverse group and followed different paths in life, but one major factor colored all their lives.
One drank himself to death in his early thirties. His twin brother, trained as a mining engineer, shot himself in his late fifties. A third bounced from job to job--fireman, painter, property manager--until he was able to retire. Another realized his lifelong dream of becoming a successful small-town lawyer, only to die of a heart attack in his early sixties. Two graduated from Ivy League colleges, and one went on to earn a PhD in Chemistry from MIT, but their careers were never what they'd hoped.
What did their lives have in common? All were substantially affected by alcoholism.
The three who are still alive attended the reunion. Two traveled all the way from California to Kansas City to reconnect with old friends. At 68, they have all been sober for many years--two since their mid forties and the third since age 60. They have ultimately attained a level of acceptance and peace in their lives, but their careers and relationships suffered.
As we were driving back to the hotel from the first reunion event, OG told me about attending the funeral of the first friend. Afterward, the one who was a lawyer came up to him and asked, "Why do you think we all drink so much?" I've been pondering that question, because, while heavy drinking isn't particularly uncommon, six out of six seemed like a startlingly high percentage.
I don't know if any of the others grew up in alcoholic homes, but I know OG didn't. However, they lived in a rough, inner city neighborhood and attended a diverse, and often violent, high school. OG said you never knew when you might be jumped and beaten, in or out of school. And he was a letterman on the football team. Imagine what life must have been like for the smaller boys. It's a good thing guns weren't as readily available as they are now. Of those classmates who didn't go straight into the army and to Vietnam, a significant number ended up in the penitentiary or dead.
I think he and his friends, like many soldiers, suffered from PTSD as a result of the pervasive violence, so to ease the pain and anxiety, they drank. And they didn't stop, even after escaping that environment. They didn't stop until they either had no choice or were dead. A fifty percent survival rate is pretty grim.
But observing these survivors at the reunion also reminded me of soldiers in another, more positive, way. These friends were bonded in the way combat binds warriors. They mourned those they'd lost and clung tightly to each other. OG was an only child, and in his own words, these were his brothers. As I watched them embrace after so many years, I knew I was in the presence of a true Band of Brothers. I was sad for what they'd suffered, but glad to see them find strength in each other.
Alison
www.alisonhenderson.com
Showing posts with label PTSD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PTSD. Show all posts
Sunday, November 5, 2017
Saturday, September 10, 2016
What Lies Beneath? You don’t want to know about this suspense! by Rolynn Anderson
My hairdryer led me into the abyss. Fairly new, with all ‘ionic’ features,
whatever that means, the ding-dang dryer was acting up. It would blow hot hair, then cold; it would
produce lots of air, then very little.
First thought: I’d bought a lemon; second thought: Is there a problem with the air vents? Are they obstructed?
Were they ever! I took a tweezers to those layers of
dust. Gone! Result: the hairdryer operated as good as new.
I walk by the refrigerator. A yellow indicator light draws my attention
and I squint to read the information.
“Clean coils!” What? More dust and more havoc to deal with? On my knees, then flattened on my side, I
shine the flashlight into a place no one ought to have to look. Horrors!
Globs of dust everywhere.
Now where do I find a brush narrow enough and long
enough to clean out those coils? And how
important is this task? I use the
longest brush cleaner I have; I even stick a wood lefse turner into the dark
reaches, hoping I’ll gather up some dust.
I bring out globs of the stuff, but more remains, unreachable. Yet, the indicator light goes out. Success!
Later I think: I should have turned off the power on the
refrigerator while I dug around those dark places. I won’t forget to add that safety feature
next time.
Here’s the thing.
Our kitchen refrigerator has stood in place for about 20 years. We ‘owned’ it when we bought the house in
2000. I swear, no one has ever cleaned
those coils. Did you know there’s a pan
for collecting water down there? How
gross does yours look compared to mine?
Worse, we brought a very old refrigerator to this
house to provide coolness to my chardonnay wine collection. Forty years of chill-time? Have I ever cleaned its coils? Of course not! But now I’m thinking I better, even if I
don’t want to.
Lesson to self:
One obstruction leads to another.
Question for my readers: What else have we forgotten
to clean out after all these years?
Speaking of obstructions, every character in FEAR
LAND confronts a barrier to their happiness.
If these people don’t solve their problems, anxiety, instead of joy,
will take over their lives. Watch how a
soldier, a psychiatrist and a boy deal with trauma in this suspense novel,
spiked with romance!
http://amzn.com/B012JE75ES
Friday, July 1, 2016
Canning Stories: A Legacy of Canning Fruit by Rolynn Anderson
NATURE’S
BOUNTY. Notice the capital letters, showing reverence. When my husband and I bought our 1993-built
home on half an acre here on the Central Coast, the size of the one-story
house, it’s California ranch style, and its half acre lot were big sellers,
but the side-yard, filled with fruit trees tickled my fancy. All the trees were puny, but the
potential! Two apricot, two plum, one
each of orange, fig, peach, apple, and lemon.
The peach and lemon died and I added an Asian pear apple, a lime and a
grapefruit. Every year the orange, fig, and apple produce. Not the apricot and
plum. But this year, the plum tree went
absolutely wild. I had enough plums to
feed the multitudes. I froze jam and
dried plums, but I also froze fresh fruit for future cobblers and ice cream
toppings.
So now you have
the background. The point is, I come
from a long line of fruit canners. Do
you?
At the height of
the plum season, I had to leave my house for a two-week family reunion. I invited about twenty women to come pick
plums while I was gone. Takers out of
twenty? Eight. Why? The
women who came before I left town and after, were canners. They’d grown up in households where if you
grew fruit, you canned it; if your neighbors had extra fruit, they shared and
you canned theirs. If the peaches or
pears were cheap in the marketplace, you bought a bushel and canned the fruit. If you heard someone had Santa Rosa plums, you came running. I come from a family of canners. Do you?
Before I left
for my trip, some of women came over to my house to get the lay of the
land. Most of them were wide-eyed at the
bounty, excited to tell me stories of making jam, preserves and cobblers with
fresh fruit. They left my house excited
about their bags of fruit and anxious to tell me, when I returned, how they
used the plums.
Eight out of
twenty women who pulled plums off my trees were canners. I come from a long line of fruit
canners. Do you?
****
Fear Land is a finalist for a Rone Award, thanks to all of you who convinced the Rone judges take a last look at my novel.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4990049.Rolynn_Anderson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)