On the Ropes

I spent more than thirteen years on a pink cloud in AA. Then my sister had to go through a painful operation; shortly after, her husband killed himself; we discovered that a "cousin" was really our brother--my mother's son from a rape-incest event; my father, for whom I'd worked most of my life, fired me; then he decided to divorce my mother a few months before they were going to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary.