Plans

Tomorrow morning I'll do my radio show and then I'm calling the police.

My father , who is over sixty years old , has disappeared on another drunken bender.
Last November I went to the weird little cottage that he calls an antiques shop, my grandmother was worried because she hadn't heard from him for weeks; when he drinks he lives at the shop despite it having no shower, kitchen or bed.

He was a filthy , drunken mess but I got him to his mother's house and he stayed sober until a couple weeks ago, but he's gone again and his mother is worried. Really worried.

She should be. I think my dad is dead. Forty years of hard drinking has to catch up, he looked like hell even when he wasn't drinking, like he was 80 and could barely walk.

This is what he does: He sits in a tiny building with the doors shut and "closed" sign up, and he drinks himself into oblivion for weeks until finally someone from church, the police or the family goes and pulls him out of his ruin.

This might last a month, then he goes away again.

I can't do it again. I told my grandmother I can't do it again. I cannot. If he's dead and I find the body, I will break.
I feel strong and ready for the inevitable, but not enough to discover his body.

I have been through that before and I'm not ready to do it again. I'm not even ready to think about the last time. Sometimes we forget things because we have to and I'm not sure digging out all the details is always a good idea.

It's a surprise to me that my grannie hasn't called the police herself, but she never wants to...we used to have a family friend on the force who would check on Dad, but he got sick of dragging Dad's drunk sorry ass home, and I think he'll stop being nice and just take him to jail next time.

Which is exactly what I want. He needs to be forced into a de-tox center and being AWOL for nearly three weeks is cause for a missing persons report. When they find him , he'll either be dead or so completely fucked-up they'll put him in de-tox and Psych Ward , or at least I hope they will.

I can't take it anymore. I've tried and there's nothing I can do. This is my last effort and I'm doing it by telephone, going to call my police friend and ask him to take a rescue squad to Dad's hovel and drag him out- I hope they will- I have learned of a recent injury Dad incurred while drunk, so I hope I have enough info to convince them to check on him one last time.

There are some things I can do and there are some things I can't. And I can't deal with this situation. I don't have the training or skills or knowledge to manage someone who is this far gone; I'm only 16 months into being sober myself and I'm in no position to intervene-again.

I have talked this over with the Twin and we agreed that I might as well wait until tomorrow so I could do my show and maybe we could watch the Bears game before we got the call back from the town police.
If that sounds cold, you don't understand how many desperate emergencies that turned out to be just another drunken binge- how many people from the church and family have wasted words on him...I'm done and so are all our family friends. Only my grandmother still cares, so I will do this for her.

I'm doing my show, then my laundry and I'll wait till halftime of the Bears game.
I'll call the police during halftime, that way I won't interrupt their viewing either.

I hope they put my father in rehab and make him stay. He won't go on his own- the church will pay but he won't go. We'll see.


At least it'll be a great game tomorrow- I'm a Bears fan, but I'd have a hard time being sore if New Orleans won. If anyone deserves a morale boost, it's New Orleans.
It's a win/win game.