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When I started going to AA meetings I was very fortunate to be matched up with an older gentleman who agreed to be my “sponsor”. We didn’t pay much attention to the 12 Step Program but saw each other almost everyday at meetings and became good friends. He volunteered regularly in the local community and was highly respected by all who knew him. A year and a half later he was diagnosed with throat cancer and went through all the chemo and radiation but couldn’t beat the disease. He died a year and a half later.

I went to his funeral in a large local church. The sanctuary was full to overflowing. His son gave the eulogy and spoke of his two fathers, one a heavy drinking father he grew up with and hated and the other who was sober for the last 17 years of his life and grew to love. Listening to him I couldn’t help but get the feeling that he felt he had been cheated out of so many years of a relationship he had wished for but had been denied him. That made a huge impression on me about what I had cheated my own family out of because of heavy drinking. I thought about how long 17 years of total sobriety was and how difficult that could possibly be.

Next Saturday, June 29, 2019 will mark my 17th year of being alcohol free. Thank you, Jim.