I take it your mom and dad were happily married all of their lives. Are they still around?
We had six kids, my dad was career Navy, and was a high functioning alcoholic his entire life, except the last 15 years when he got sober.
Being a military wife, with your husband gone all the time, and six rambunctious kids all a year apart is not an easy row to hoe, but my dad was a good man and he loved his family, so my mom, God Bless her, she made it work.
My mom and dad loved each other, it was plain, but they fought a lot for obvious reasons. Actually, she fought him and the alcohol. He wasn’t mean or nasty, didn’t hurt us, but it was tough on my mom.
But late in life, we had a family intervention. I was going to the bars in town to find him so he didn’t try to drive home. That is a hard thing to do, I can tell you. I had so much respect for my dad, I hero-worshiped him, and as an adult, it was an awful thing to have to do.
But he stopped drinking, became active in AA, sometimes going up to five nights a week, hosting meetings, the whole nine yards.
And when he got sober, he and my mom became a couple in love again, and it was wonderful to see. They had 15 years of married bliss before my dad died of a stroke, and my mom went about six years later. They were married for 48 years, both dying relatively young by today’s standards.
They are both buried down in Arlington now, and she is forever on top...:)
And with my beloved mom, who has been gone nearly twenty years now...that is how it should be!