A Mother’s Regret

JESSE’S MOM: I think I want to write a book: How to Date a Widow. Or maybe it should be how to date someone who has lost their family in a horrible tragedy.

FRIEND: Is it that bad?

JM: Dating is bad in general, only made worse by the circumstances.

F: Dare I ask? What happened?

JM: Last week I went out with this guy for the third time and, my hand to god, he actually asked me what my biggest regret was.

F: Oh no.

JM: Oh yes. He knew my situation. We were set up by mutual friends. What on earth would possess a man to ask someone like me a question like that!? On a date, no less.

F: What did you say?

JM: At first there was the uncomfortable silence. But honestly, I am not sure he knew that it was uncomfortable. I think he thought I was just thinking about it. Which I was. I was thinking about saying, “Not staying on the phone all night with my husband the night before he died. Not forcing Randy to wake Alexia up so I could tell her I love her one last time. Every time I chose to do chores or run errands instead of play with the kids or hang out with my husband. Every minute I spent preparing my daughter for adulthood instead of just having fun and goofing around.”

F: Why didn’t you say those things? I mean, he asked.

JM: I guess because none of those things are my biggest regret.

F: What is your biggest regret, then? If you don’t mind my asking.

JM: It’s weird. I had never thought about it until he asked. So I guess I have George or Frank or whatever his name was to thank for clarifying it. A couple of days after they died, Jesse came into my bedroom late and asked if he could sleep with me. Of course I let him, and we huddled together quietly until we fell asleep. The next morning I woke up to the crush. That horrifying moment when you remember everything and it feels like you are learning about it for the first time. I started to cry. Jesse woke up shortly after and I felt his little hand on my shoulder. I was facing away from him so I wouldn’t wake him up. And it just came out of my mouth, “Why didn’t your father make you wear life jackets? Why weren’t you wearing life jackets?” God dammit why would I ask a seven year old little boy who has just lost his father a question like that!?

F: Do you think he hadn’t thought of that?

JM: I don’t know if he had or not. But her certainly does now. And more importantly he knows that I think of it, too.

F: Have you talked to him about it since?

JM: I just can’t bring it up. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. And I don’t want to make it worse.

F: What did he say? Did he answer the question?

JM: He said the life jackets were in the boat and that he didn’t remember why they weren’t wearing them.

F: Jesus. … So what did you tell the guy was your biggest regret?

JM: I told him I regretted not taking typing in high school.

What ever happened to that kid...

My name is Steve Appleton and I am an alcoholic.

(Hi, Steve.)

Hello, everyone. So grateful to be here tonight. Thanks for having me. I don’t have a lot of time so I want to keep my remarks brief. Gonna try to distill this mess down to its essence.

I was a weird kid. My dad was a horrible alcoholic and the last time I saw him alive (well alive or dead, because I didn’t see him when he was dead) was when I was 6. He came to our house drunk demanding to see “his kids” and shot bullets into the locked door when my mom refused.

My mother was morbidly obese. She couldn’t take care of us because she couldn’t really get out of her chair in front of the TV. I was poorly nourished (in many different ways) and I smelled bad. And when you smell bad it’s important to not to let anyone come too close. So I was mean. Oh and I was gay. I was a gay, smelly, skinny, mean, weird little kid.

And I was ashamed. I remember being in kindergarten and falling off the monkey bars and getting the wind knocked out of me … I couldn’t breath. I thought I was dying. And at that moment the most important thing to me was pretending like everything was ok. I didn’t want anyone to know that I was not ok.

When I was 13, I had my first drink. And let me tell you … when you feel like I did and you take that first drink… everything just melts away... I had found my solution. My solution to problems I didn’t even know I had. So for the next 14 years, I did everything I had to, to stay in the solution.

Being gay I moved from the small town I grew up in to the big city to be with my people. I was going to become a part of my community. But I ended up drinking and drugging and prostituting myself instead.

It’s funny because I thought the big city would save me because there were other gay people here but really the big city saved me because there were so many recovery programs available for poor, homeless drug addicts and alcoholics. I was in and out of them for years and was encouraged to attend AA meetings. But I already had a solution for my alcoholism … alcohol!

I want to go back to my junior high for a second because something happened in junior high that planted the seed for this program.

I was a skinny kid and I used to wear these big pants that I belted up to my nipples. This was partly because we were poor but it was also because I wore girls’ underwear. One day in class my pants must have come down enough so that one of the kids noticed my lacey, pink underwear and … yeah. You get the idea. You all know what happened. The rest of the day was as bad as you could possibly imagine. It wasn’t the underwear issue that bothered me really. Or the insults or the physical harassment. It was the attention. I just hated being the center of attention. I had spent my life trying to avoid being noticed. And here I was the only thing anyone was thinking about.

This is how miserable my home life was. I went to school the next day. I showed up at school as late as possible before the bell rang and I slipped into class. But oddly enough no one said anything. Not a word. And between classes no one even looked at me.

Then as I was sitting off in my usual corner at lunch I looked up and saw this other loner kid walking into the lunch area in a dress. I kid you not, he was, head to toe, dressed like woman.

He was a loner but not like me. He was good looking, athletic, smart and strait. Everyone wanted to be his friend. But he chose to be by himself.

I was mortified … furious. But the truth was, no one said a word to me after that. This could have been the defining moment of my school years. I could have been beaten up and teased for years to come. But because this kid showed up in a dress (and he wore a dress to school for a week!) no one ever said a word to me again about it.

The reason I tell that story is that years later sitting in the Salvation Army at my required AA meeting a strange thing happened. I had reached the point where alcohol and drugs just weren’t working any more. I had barely made it through high school. I had no friends. No one in my family I had spoken to in years. And I had no solution to this empty horrific feeling that followed me everywhere I went and only seemed to be getting worse. And standing at the podium was a woman who had been sober for 14 years. She had been a prostitute on the streets. No education. Hopelessly addicted. And here she was, fresh faced, working as a counselor at a drug and alcohol treatment facility, happy and useful.

And I remembered that kid, Jesse. How he hadn’t stuck up for me. He hadn’t fought for me. He didn’t do what I needed to do for myself. He just showed up in a dress and said (without actually saying it), “You are not alone.”

It didn’t fix me. It didn’t stop the tragic trajectory of my life. It didn’t make high school easy. But it did stop it from being considerably worse.

12 years later, I am a lawyer. I am a productive member of society. I have all the same troubles that normal people have and I experience all the same joys. And I do none of that alone.

For that I am incredibly grateful. Grateful to AA. Grateful to all of you. And grateful to Jesse. Thank you for showing me what it looks like to be decent. To be considerate. To be helpful. To be kind.