I was dragged around to meetings in every variety of smoke filled room, to conferences and conventions and dances and picnics for years. I began attending alateen meetings before I was an ala-'teen', and was in service positions from the time I was 12. Just before my 13th birthday, we left Nevada after my mom's first and only failed AA marriage (her 4th overall), and came to Denver.
 I didn't handle the adjustment well, and it wasn't long before I was attracted to the counter-cultural temptations of the big city. I started using, and left home before my 15th birthday, never to really return.
 It broke my mom's heart to see me running the streets, and active in my addiction. At one point, I was pulled into ‘the system', and ended up spending fifteen months locked up before my 18th birthday. I still bear the needle & thread tattoos aquired during that era of my life.
 There was no escaping the realization for me, however private or wrestled with, that I had ‘the disease' (what she knew as alcoholism, and I now know as a broader understanding of addiction). My mom had planted the seeds of recovery in me early on, and I knew what it was about. If exposure to the principles of the 12 Steps will fuck up your using, then my whole career was fucked up. It was never a party for me. From Day One it was obsession and compulsion, and I knew it.

 My mom began working in the field of alcoholism & drug abuse rehabilitation when she had about six years, and it became her passion. She filled her home with volumes and volumes of books on recovery and human development. She became, at age 50, the first college graduate in all the generations of my family.  Often, when hiding out at her house after a bad run on the streets, I would peruse these books, taking a purely academic interest, mind you.
 She taped every keynote speaker at every convention she ever attended, and had boxes and boxes of such tapes of workshops, speaker meetings and similar events, dating back for many years. Among these things, I found and listened to recordings of Bill W, discussing the development of the steps and traditions, something which has given me good direction in my own recovery. The simple language from the horses mouth was a far cry from the cabalistic and nebulous projections of we who followed.

 The day before my 37th birthday, I had finally done enough research. I had fought my entire life to avoid walking in my mom's shadow. She had said for years that I was sick, and that she knew what the solution was. I tried to evade that reality for a long, long time, and suffered for it.
 I came to Narcotics Anonymous profoundly and thoroughly beaten, and when I sat down in my first meeting, it was clear that I had come home, for the first time since I was fourteen years old.
 My mom's shadow stopped looming over me, and I came to understand her recovery as being among my life's greatest gifts. I already had roots in the 12 Steps, and a history when I sat my ass in that chair, and didn't have to grapple too hard with concepts. I just needed to get to work, and apply it in my life and my own recovery.

 My mom began to suffer from a neurological disorder when she had about 25 years in AA. Among the early symptoms of the disease were staggering, loss of balance, emotional lability, and slurred speech. I remember her profound pain, as many people in her fellowship began to whisper that she was in relapse, and avoided her when she was most frightened and in need. It was a difficult time for her, but she kept faith, and did the best she could.
 I have a tape of that slurred voice, reading from the big book, in a tape player near at hand as I write this. She knew that she was losing her ability to speak and read, and was taping her own reading so that she would have it for the future.
 I promised my mom that she would not be alone, that we loved and believed in her, and As I grew in my recovery, I felt more and more honored to help and support her.

  We attended a Colorado Regional Convention of NA, when she had 29 years, and had become wheelchair bound. At the clean time countdown, I physically lifted her up in my arms to stand up for her time. She had the longest standing clean time in the room.
 On Sept 17th, 1996, my mom's disorder took her, after a tortuous course that robbed her of her ability to speak, swallow, focus her eyes, or control her simplest movements. When it was clear that her death was imminent, I moved the bed from our room, and moved in a hospital bed for her. For ten days, I stayed with her in that room, playing her soft music, reading to her from the Big Book, from the NA text, from daily meditations, and Kahlil Gibran. I moved her tv set onto a table in front of her eyes, and played her video tapes of family gatherings, holidays, and trips taken. We arranged a conference call to the entire family from around the country, and there, with her grandchildren and her sons in the room, we all surrounded her with love and said our good-byes.
 My sponsor and sponsees were gathered in the room with her at another point, and though she couldn't speak it, the look in her eyes at my sponsor was absolutely a clear "thank you".

 My mom and I were football nuts, and watched all the games with rabid enthusiasm.
 On her last Sunday alive, the Broncos were playing the Chiefs. We were together in the room. She had been taking massive doses of morphine and Ativan to deal with the suffering she was enduring. Suddenly, her TV, which had performed faithfully for years, failed - just went black. I realized that at that moment, she had also slipped into the coma from which she would not awaken.
I laid next to her through that and the next day, holding her and talking to her about our lives. I thanked her for my life and for our recovery.
 I had drifted off late Monday night, and was laying next to her with my hand over her heart.
 I was jolted into awareness by a profound realization - that I had just felt her last heartbeat.
 She died in my arms, and my promise was kept.

 How far a journey from that night in Nevada, when she first admitted her powerlessness and unmanageability. What hope there was that a beaten family could ever be restored was born that night, and it's promise was fulfilled thirty three years, and forty four days later.
 In that time, she touched thousands of lives. A casino change runner - a party girl from the Colorado mountains had built a legacy and a monument, on single 24 hour periods of staying clean.
 I resented my mom for damaging me, and held her failures out for years as the excuse for my own. Forgiveness is a circle, with she and I in the middle, and then others outward from there...
 Another example of how practicing a principal heals us.
 Thanks, mom, for those lessons and the planted seeds. And thanks to those who came before, and to those before them. Let our detractors howl - this program and these steps are a miracle and a blessing in our lives.
                                                            Love y'all,    Steve
1997