The Wonder of It All

It was three o'clock in the morning, and I was in my kitchen drinking wine right from the bottle. It was 1998, the year that my younger brother, Ed, died from acute alcoholism. He was only forty-five years old. I was a sixty-three-year-old woman who drank every day. I didn't know how not to drink. I missed my brother very much, and I was angry and scared. You'd think that after watching Ed die such a painful death, any sane person would quit. But I wasn't anywhere near sane. I had five other brothers and only one of them had had a problem with his drinking. He had been in Alcoholics Anonymous for a while and now he didn't drink at all. I also had three grown sons who were able to drink like normal people. With all of these wonderful brothers and sons in my life, I still felt very much alone. I didn't deserve to have them come and visit. I had worried and hurt them so many times and they didn't want to watch me die, as they had watched Ed. In fact, no one came to see me much anymore. I wasn't pleasant to be around.