I met my husband back in September 2007 while he was attending school at Maxwell AFB. We were both divorced with no plans to remarry – ever. I had decided that I would devote all of my love, time and attention to my children and that I didn’t have the time or room in my life for a relationship. He had no children and decided to dedicate his life to the Air Force and his career. God had decided that He had other plans.

Our first date was to be pizza at a local restaurant followed by Rob Zombie’s remake of the seventies horror flick, Halloween. In one of our pre-date phone conversations I let him know that I didn’t do chick flicks. I told him I pretty much stuck to horror, war and gangster (Mafioso, not hood) movies as girly, romantic movies made me nauseous (and still do). I think he was just happy that he wasn’t going to be out but 30 or 40 bucks.

As I pulled into the parking lot of the Mellow Mushroom, I saw him standing outside in khaki shorts and a tee-shirt. Although this was a blind date, I knew it was him. Even in casual clothes you could tell he was a military man. I noticed right away that he had great legs. I was tickled pink. I have a tendency to be discriminating when it comes to the physical appearance of a male companion – even if it is only for an evening.

As I parked my car I thought of how courteous he was to wait in the afternoon heat for me to arrive. As I learned much, much later, he had a purpose in waiting outside the restaurant. He knew the type of car to expect and had strategically mapped out an escape route to take if a troll emerged from my vehicle. He told me later that as I stepped out of the car he prayed, “Oh God please let that be her!”

Dinner was wonderful except for the horrible pizza he ordered – putting barbecue chicken on pizza is like putting whipped cream on a hot dog. It’s just gross. With a command of the gag reflex that would make Linda Lovelace envious, I was able to ingest one small piece of that culinary atrocity. I talked more or less nonstop so that he wouldn’t feel obligated to offer me another slice. I was enjoying our conversation immensely. I produced pictures of the children, an unforgivable faux pas if a woman is engaged in husband hunting. Since I was not, I regaled him with a few funny stories about the kids and, to my surprise, he genuinely found them amusing.

To those of you that know me, it should come as no surprise that the talk quickly turned to politics and history. I had the opportunity to educate my darling Yankee escort on the immoral and unconstitutional War of Northern Aggression and that contemptible federalist, Lincoln. We heatedly discussed the topic until it was time to see the movie. By the time we got to the theater I realized that I was already a little bit in love with him. It took him just a couple more hours to realize that he felt it, too. After the movie we went for a drink and I think he expected me to order a frou-frou, girly concoction. He says he was totally smitten when he heard me say five little words. They were, “Do you have Guinness Stout?”

We married on November 25, 2008 at the courthouse in my hometown. It was just him, me, the children and the judge that had given me three days for disorderly conduct several years earlier. As odd as that sounds, that same judge played a very crucial role in getting me to the altar that day. You see, I’m a recovering prescription pill addict and that judge was the very first person that had ever demanded any accountability out of me. The day I went in front of him on that disorderly conduct charge seemed like a lifetime ago. No amount of begging, pleading anger or manipulation I tried kept him from tossing me in jail that day. It was the first time in my life that I felt totally and utterly humiliated and worthless. It was also the day that I decided that I was going to die if I didn’t change. I couldn’t even call what I was doing living. I merely existed. I didn’t feel anything anymore. My life had become an illusion – a show that I put on for my friends and family. After all that they had been through with my surgeries, I didn’t want them to know that I had become addicted to the OxyContin.

I’m not going to give my drunk-a-log in detail – just the extremely abbreviated version.

I realized after spending three days in jail for acting like a completely obnoxious fool that I needed help. With the blessing and money of my grandparents, I checked myself into a drug treatment facility in Georgia. The head-shrinkers initially didn’t believe me when I told them just how much I had been taking to get high and so they decided to let me go into withdrawals just to gauge how bad my addiction had become. I nearly had a stroke about sixteen hours later. It took me a full year before I didn’t feel like I had the flu everyday and eighteen months before I slept more than two or three hours at a time.

I celebrate four years clean in July.

Telling Bill about that was one of the hardest things I have ever done but I loved him. It wasn’t fair to keep a secret like that from him. Secrets kill people like me. I spilled as much of the story to him as I could bear to tell. I knew he loved me but also I knew he might decide that he didn’t want to see me anymore. He responded by telling me that his father was an alcoholic and that he had not seen him in almost 30 years. The look on his face was the same look that I had seen on the face of my grandfather when I was in the midst of my addiction – gut wrenching pain.

Through the next several months I learned a lot about Bill’s father, Mick. He was always the life of the party and sought out because of his gregarious and outgoing nature. Everyone loved him and wanted to be around him. But he never could seem to just drink socially and went home knee walking drunk almost every night. Bill said that Mick was never mean when he drank. He remembered his father as loving and kind and that he had really big, strong hands. He said that his parents’ marriage eventually fell apart, but he was so young that he didn’t remember a lot of the details. He said that he did remember his dad tried AA, but he didn’t know what happened.

I knew he missed his father. It was evident in the way that he spoke and in his body language. I decided to try and find Mick, hoping against hope that he had sobered up and was alive and well. I didn’t tell Bill that I was looking. I was afraid of him getting his hopes dashed if Mick was off the wagon or in the cemetery. Using a $10 option on People Search, I found an address in Ohio with a name so unique that it had to be him. I wrote a letter, mailed it to the address and waited on pins and needles.

Four days later I answered the telephone and my life changed forever. On the other end of the line was Mick, over 20 years sober. He was everything that Bill had said – kind, loving, funny and patient. I trusted him immediately and was totally at ease with telling him about my addiction. I had never been comfortable telling anyone in Bill’s family up until then, but Mick and I connected on a level that normal people cannot grasp. Try as they might, “normies” can never fully understand what it is like to be an addict or an alcoholic. It is impossible unless you’ve traveled that path and needed a substance you loved and hated at the same time because it made you feel normal. He felt like a father immediately.

When Bill came home I told him what I had done. It took a few days, but he finally got the courage to call Mick. It was like time stood still. They still loved each other just as much as they did when Bill was small enough to ride on Mick’s shoulders. Plans were made and Mick drove down with his wife a few weeks later. It was the most poignant reunion I have ever witnessed. It was Fathers’ Day weekend. I gave Mick a coffee cup that I found because it said something that I wanted him to remember everyday. “My Daughter-in-Law Thinks I Rock!” And I do.

That visit was almost a year ago. Bill and Mick are thick as thieves and a joy to be around when they are together. They look alike and have the same mannerisms. They each have the annoying habit of shrugging their shoulders and saying, “Ah…What are ya gonna do about it?” And Bill and Mick are happy.

But sometimes fate is cruel. Two months ago we found out that Mick has cancer and it is terminal. I didn’t realize the impact that he had on my life until I was driving home after work one evening and the song, “Live Like You Were Dying,” came on the radio. I had to pull over. I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. It has been less than a year and already he is someone that I can’t imagine not being in our lives.

And if there is one thing that being a recovering addict has taught me, it is to let people know how you feel about them today. Life becomes so precious when you realize that you can’t even a single breath for granted – when you have crawled through hell and found happiness and love waiting on the other side.

I love you, Mick. Thank you for sharing your love with me and Bill. Thank you for wanting us to be a part of your life. Thank you for being his dad.

And thank you for being my example.

You really do ROCK!

“I was in my early forties,
“With a lot of life before me,
“An’ a moment came that stopped me on a dime.
“I spent most of the next days,
“Looking at the x-rays,
“An’ talking ’bout the options an’ talkin’ ‘bout sweet time.”
I asked him when it sank in,
That this might really be the real end?
How’s it hit you when you get that kind of news?
Man whatcha do?

An’ he said: “I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
“I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
“And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
“And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying.”
An’ he said: “Some day, I hope you get the chance,”To live like you were dyin’.”

He said “I was finally the husband,
“That most the time I wasn’t.
“An’ I became a friend a friend would like to have.
“And all of a sudden goin’ fishin’,
“Wasn’t such an imposition,”And I went three times that year I lost my Dad.
“Well, I finally read the Good Book,
“And I took a good long hard look,
“At what I’d do if I could do it all again,

“And then: “I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
“I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
“And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
“And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying.”
An’ he said: “Some day, I hope you get the chance,
“To live like you were dyin’.”

Like tomorrow was a gift,
And you got eternity,
To think about what you’d do with it.
An’ what did you do with it?
An’ what can I do with it?
An’ what would I do with it?

“Sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
“I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
“And then I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
“And I watched Blue Eagle as it was flyin’.”
An’ he said: “Some day, I hope you get the chance,
“To live like you were dyin’.”