A Life Lost (For Class: Mandatory)

After reading Sander Scott's "Under the Influence", I immediately became aware of who the intended audience was. I know that many people will think that this essay was written with the general public in mind, to create awareness of a painful reality. It is not. It was written for those who shared his grief in some form, when watching someone destroyed by addiction, and to express the helpless anguish shared by those who have been touched by this evil.

In his essay, he creates a very close first person view. This very personal essay gives him the feeling of a journal writer, the audience witnessing his internal struggles. His reality becomes the reader's reality. Without having experienced some of the things that he describes, a reader would understand in a limited light, but would not be able to fathom the true pain that hides behind the words. For example, when he describes the feinting hope that would come every time it appeared that his father might have decided to stop, only one who has played witness to such hope can feel the true tug, and hear the tears in his words. This cycle of reaching for a dream one is helpless to enact, see it like a mirage, then watch it disappear, can only be understood by those who have watched someone dig their own grave with helpless commitment.

I can no longer hold back my bleeding heart. The main reason I know the pain he experienced is that I have felt it too, though on a lesser level, been hopeful and then watched my hopes crashing into splinters on the rocks of reality. Except, for me, it was my grandfather who drank, in fact drank himself to death.

I remember as crisp as yesterday, my early childhood with my grandfather. I was unaware of his drinking problems. I only remember then, he would spin me like a helicopter blade, his actions as graceful as any ice dancer. His laughs and my own shared a common tingle, one of mutual love.

It wasn't until we moved in with my grandfather, that I learned the deadly secret. My family sold our old house, and could not find a new one. While searching for a new home, I learned things I wish I never did.

There were not enough beds, so I would end up sleeping in the same bed as my grandfather. He did not abuse me, yet at night, with fetid breath, he would poke my back, thinking it was funny. After several weeks without sleep, my family moved me into another room, with a cot, as I was no longer able to sleep in his presence. It would not be until latter, that I learned what drove his actions.

Then, my grandfather had a stroke. This was the first time I learned of his drinking problems. My father would lament that he drank socially, but that it had become an addiction. I could see in my father what Sanders described, a hidden bitterness that colored his every description of his father. And as I had to care for my grandfather at times, I too started to share this bitterness.

When he was sent to the hospital, I dreaded every visit. No longer did I remember the joy of memories. I blamed him for his circumstance, and almost hated him for his mistakes. Even while in the hospital, a dying man, I heard rumors that he still asked for alcohol. While the hospital would not supply the six packs of bottles of beer for him, his addiction raged within his mind. For this I did not forgive him. As I watched him slowly dying, my father witness someone much closer pulling away, and his pain became my own. I almost did not know the man laying in the bed, covered with the flimsy white hospital gown.

It would not be until his death that I would see my own folly. I do not know if my memory is false, but it seems so real to me. He lay in the bed in his old house, rasping gasps as he stared into the ceiling. It seemed so long before his breathing finally stopped, his having drowned in his own saliva. In a family where everyone lived to be a hundred, he died young.

It would not be until a year or more latter that the personal shame would come. The memories flooded back, of happier times. And then came the most painful realization of all, that in the end, I never told him I loved him. That he gave me years of happiness, and that I never thanked him for it. In my own bitterness I took away the gift that I should never have stolen. And forever after, to this very day, I feel the anguish in my heart. And death does not forgive.

I do not like to drink. Like Sanders, I avoid drinking when possible, sometimes coming up with the lamest of excuses. Perhaps I am reading his intentions wrong, perhaps he meant to speak to everyone. But through the red veil of my emotions I cannot see it. All I can feel is that life I lost, an experience that, it seems, I share with others.

Sanders, Scott R. "Under the Influence." The Art of the personal essay; an anthology from the classical era to the present (1994): 732-44. Print.