Puppies! - Val's Story, Chap 16

And so, Val fell down the hole again.

          It wasn’t just the death of her youngest dog; it’s never just one thing. She was frustrated with her job, feeling it was going nowhere. She wasn’t seeing eye-to-eye with her AA sponsor, so she had already started skipping meetings. Since she had been sober three months, once she got her three-month coin, she thought it was cause for celebration. Even after those three months of meetings, the only way she knew to celebrate was to open a bottle.

I don’t remember much about Val’s life after that for the next year. I had injured my back on the first of April, four weeks before Bleu died, and I had a hard time getting around for many months after that.

          I texted Val regularly and called at least once a week. She swore she had her drinking under control, that she could handle it, and that there was nothing wrong with having too much to drink on the weekends.

          One weekend in July, she booked an Airbnb with Buddy and some friends. The friends bailed on her, but she went anyway. At the last minute, she invited me to join her. I had a funeral to go to Saturday morning, but promised I’d drive the two hours to the cabin as soon as I could. She asked me to meet at a bar and grill a few miles from the rental, and I thought, “Great, here we go, my daughter will be drunk all weekend.”      

          When I got there, we decided to eat lunch on the deck outside the bar, and to my surprise, she ordered a soda with her meal. Maybe, just maybe, I thought, she can handle her drinking.

          We had a nice time together, hiking through different parks with Buddy, watching movies that night, and laughing like we used to.

          But that darn hole was still there.

~~~

She got a part-time job bartending at a different bar, this one much closer to her house. Working from home during the day was still hard on her, having no one to talk to in person.

          She’d always had roommates to help her with the bills. Even when she was married, it seemed like a friend was crashing with them, paying what rent they could. Unfortunately, many of these roommates were unsavory. Not only did they not all pay rent, but they didn’t help with chores around the house, and some of them would supply her with street drugs, as if the alcohol wasn’t enough for her.

          And the boyfriends. None were as bad as the one she kicked out of her house during our last trip to Africa. But still, this Momma worried nonstop about her choices.

          Easter morning, 2024, my phone rang earlier than expected.

          “Guess what?” Val’s voice met my ear.

          “You’re going to Easter services at church this morning?” A mom could continue to hope.

          “You’re so funny, Mom. No, I have puppies!”

          Well, I guess that’s better than announcing she had herpes.

          It was a convoluted story, which to this day, I’m not sure I got straight. But somehow, she ended up with three ten-week-old mixed-breed puppies that no one else could take. Of course, I dressed and drove right down to her house.

They were in poor health, and she was never quite sure what had happened to them, but she suspected they had gotten into some chemicals at their original owner’s house. They were so thin and weak that they needed help eating. We hand-fed the largest one, the only boy, and used a syringe to get nourishment into the two small girls.

Val committed to getting them all healthy, getting up several times a night to feed them and cleaning up their messes. Within a few days, they were all eating on their own and trotting around in the backyard.

          Val decided to keep the boy, whom she named Max. But she had to find homes for the two girls. We had put down Dino, our faithful mutt, in January the previous year, and though I hadn’t wanted another dog, I couldn’t turn away these pups.

Luckily, the person who took the smallest pup also decided he wanted the other girl. I wasn’t heartbroken; my husband and I really didn't need another dog, and months later she had grown larger than her brother Max. He turned out to be a handsome boy who looked like a black Golden Retriever.

I thought he’d also be a much-needed distraction for Val. She took good care of him and kept loving on her older dog, Buddy, but nothing released her from the demons that held her in that hole.

Bleu's Story - Val's Story, Chap 15, part 2

At the cabin up north in 2020

In the summer of 2022, Val’s dog Bleu had been diagnosed with blastomycosis. It was a long, expensive process to get the husky/lab mix healthy again. He lost a lot of weight and was lethargic for weeks before the antifungal meds kicked in. It can take more than six months for blasto to clear anyone’s system.

After he’d been on medication for a month or two, the vet would insist he come back in for lab work before they would refill his prescription. The drugs themselves were costly enough, but the vet bill with the labs was over four hundred dollars per visit.

After a few rounds, with Bleu completely symptom-free, Val stopped his meds. I told her several times I would pay the bill, but her bull-headedness reared its ugly head.

“The vet just wants to make money,” she answered.

The dog did fine for a long time. We all thought that surely the infection was cleared.

Then in April, close to three months after Val found sobriety, Bleu developed a few pus-filled nodules in several places on his body. After doing some research online, Val thought it could be the return of blasto. She called the vet, who said they couldn’t refill his prescription until he was seen and had a full exam with labs.

She opted to monitor the lesions and drain them when they were irritated, keeping them clean and watching for other symptoms.

Within a few weeks, he was lethargic again, not eating, and losing weight.

She called me one Sunday afternoon in a panic over his condition.

When I got there, I saw a skeleton of the once vibrant dog panting on the floor. “We gotta take him to the emergency vet right now.”

Looking back, I’m sure Val was in denial, thinking that maybe this was just a nightmare and she’d wake up. Or that she’d been imagining his condition and he’d suddenly spring back to good health.

Somehow, he was able to drag his weak body into her vehicle, and we drove to the animal ER just a few miles away.

He obediently followed us to the door on wobbly legs, but then veered off to pee in some bushes. Anyone else, including Val, would think that was a good sign. But with my medical background, I knew it meant something else – his body was shutting down.

The automatic doors to the building whooshed open, and we coaxed Bleu inside. But just as he started through the open door, he collapsed, and the stupid door tried to shut on him.

Only two scenes from my life continue to haunt me. The sight of Bleu lying there as Val screamed at his side, while those automatic doors just kept trying to close on them.

The other event was a few years before when one of the dogs killed one of our cats, and I was the first one to see her little wilted body. No blood, just a shell of fur. I couldn’t stop screaming.

But there I was years later, running into the vet’s office yelling for help.

He was gone before they got out to the door with a gurney. The staff still loaded him up and whisked him off to see what they could do.

I've had longer nights in my life, but few as painful. Holding my baby girl as tightly as I could as she sobbed uncontrollably, waiting for two of her friends to arrive for additional support.

We finally got back to her house and had to face her other dog, Buddy.

Dogs know. They know so much more than we give them credit for. They are the salve for our broken hearts, but how do we ever mend their hearts?

Bleu as a baby in 2017, with Granma.

With his big brother, Buddy

Taking a ride

The pack in 2017 - Buddy, Wesley, Bleu and Dino

And again the next year - Wesley, Dino, Bleu and Buddy. 
Only Buddy is left. So sad. 

Just an Old Table

           I was going to continue with Val’s story - we’re on the second part of chapter 15. But honestly, it’s a very sad story, and I have other memories closer to the front of my heart right now.

          When I was a kid, for as long as I can remember, an antique wooden table sat in my parents’ basement. It was solid, with five chunky legs and a ledge on its underside, perfect for hiding things. My sister Pat and I spent hours at that table, coloring, drawing, or plotting our next adventure. Sometimes friends would come over, and we’d all cluster around the table for snacks or games.

The table really is there under the table cloth and all that stuff. This is the only picture I have it from back then. 

          After Dad died and Mom sold the house, she had no room for the table in her new mobile home, so we brought it to my basement and tucked it in a corner. For a long time, we fed our cats on it and otherwise stored junk on it. Our basement flooded a few times, and those chunky wooden feet cracked; a few of them eventually fell apart.

          When Val bought her second house seven years ago, she finally had a dining room and wanted a cheap table. My parents’ old wooden table, that no longer had much of a finish and only two solid feet, would do just fine. Val and her husband at the time stripped it, stained it, glued the feet back together, and turned it into the beauty it once was. - which was before my time.

          A couple of weeks ago, the table came back home to live with me again. This time, in my dining room, where I plan to love it all over again, for even more reasons than before. 

Into the RIver - Val's Story, Chap 12, part 2

In between the drama, though, we still had good times. 

          In the spring of 2018, we took a vacation to the Ozarks in Missouri—Hubby and me, both our kids, and our son-in-law. 

          Our accommodations included two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a large kitchen. We even had a balcony in our bedroom with a view of the river. In the evenings, Val’s husband fished off the dock below, while the rest of us played shuffleboard.

          During the day, we explored local state parks, crossed some rickety historic bridges, shopped at various tourist traps, and toured Jacob’s Cave, which Val’s husband thought was so fascinating; he’d never been in a real cave before. When we first arrived in the town, we bought bags of groceries, but then went out to eat more than we should have.

          One night, I even went down to the hot tub with the kids.

We had a great time, and even though all three of the kids had alcoholic drinks with dinner, no one overindulged. It wasn’t a problem until one of the last days we were there, when we went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant and, even though it advertised alcohol, we were told their liquor license had been suspended. Val wanted to leave and go somewhere else. We settled her down and managed to enjoy our meal.

They did have to leave for home two days before us. I loved having them around, but it was so much quieter when they were gone.

          Two years later, in the fall, Val and I rented a cabin up north near Lake Superior for a long weekend. We all went again, including the kids’ three black dogs – Wesley, Buddy, and Bleu. COVID-19 still roamed the world unleashed, so indoor activities at public places were limited. But we had an entire three-bedroom house to ourselves.

          We had another good vacation. Shared a lot of laughs, climbed some small mountains, discovered new waterfalls, and even took the dogs swimming. Unfortunately, Jim had to leave on Sunday for work the next day. But I stayed behind with Nick, Val, her husband, and the dogs for another two days. The weather was beautiful those days, and the trees exploded in yellows, reds, and vibrant oranges.

          On Monday morning, when we arrived at Foster Falls, we came across a small campground along the river. At one of the sites, two large angry dogs stood guard. We didn’t want to risk walking past them to get to the falls, so we knew we’d have to cross the Potato River to access the waterfalls.

          Our Michigan Gazetteer showed that the road we had taken there actually went right through the river. We studied the spot where the road vanished into the water and shook our heads no.

          We turned around, heading back up the road to drive several miles out of our way to approach from the other side. As we started driving, I looked back and saw a pickup with a small camper coming up behind us. I couldn’t tell where it had come from and mentioned it to the kids.

          It instantly dawned on them. “Mom, I bet they just crossed the river,” my son Nick announced. 

          Oh no, I thought. Why did I open my big mouth?

          The two young men looked at each other, and I could see the gears turning – if that guy traversed the river in his truck, we should be able to in ours.

          So, they both got out of Nick’s SUV and went to talk to the camper's driver, comparing that vehicle to ours. The other driver assured them that we wouldn’t have a problem crossing. 

          Nick spun around his Toyota SUV and headed to the end of the road, where it disappears into the Potato River. 

          I do wish I had videoed it instead of just shooting pictures. That first splash into the river, when the water flew up all the way over the windshield and our lives all flashed before our eyes, as Val and I screamed, and the boys hooted. Crazy. Absolutely crazy! You’d think we were all 22 years old and driving a beat-up Chevy pickup, instead of Nick’s two-year-old four-wheel drive. (Oh, and by the way, they made me sit in the front seat!)

          We made it to the other bank, and Nick gunned it for a few hundred feet up the gravel road. After the short walk to the waterfall and back, I looked at the front of his vehicle and asked when he lost his license plate.

          He looked around. “I guess when I drove into the river.”

The Hole - Val's Story, Chap 15, part 1

Val had a deep, dark hole to climb out of, but with her usual stubborn spirit, she threw herself into recovery. She attended several AA meetings a week and even joined a few virtual meetings. She read everything she could get her hands on that talked about alcoholism and addiction. She found a sponsor and began plowing through the twelve steps.

          She started going to the gym and taking off weight. I continued going to her house nearly once a week, and we started making plans for family trips, looking up Airbnbs on the water that took dogs. We walked her dogs when the weather was nice and went shopping when it was cold or rainy out.

          There was so much laughter in our lives at that point. But I kept praying.

          I started going to Al-Anon again. I’d felt like I was walking on eggshells around Val for so long, and I wanted to make sure I was doing everything I could to keep her on the wagon. Anyone who has been to any Al-Anon meetings knows that those groups are not for the alcoholic, though; the program works to keep friends and family of alcoholics sane. 

          I’d attended meetings years before, so I knew the drill. But that knowledge didn’t always make it easy. I knew that alcoholism was a disease, just like diabetes or cancer. But if my loved one wasn’t going to take care of themselves no matter what disease they had, I was going to be angry with them.

          I had gotten so tired of alcohol being involved in everything that Val did. And I no longer wanted to be around her or anyone else when they were drinking.

          One time, before she found sobriety, I had stopped at her house around noon and told her I’d take her out for lunch. She was game and started getting ready. For some reason, the bitch in me came out, and I told her that I didn’t want her to order a drink with her meal.

          She blew up, thinking that was the dumbest thing ever. She couldn’t fathom why I would set such a condition.

          I told her, fine, it was her decision, and if she couldn’t respect my wishes, I didn’t want to go out with her. She put away her coat, and I left.

          That’s how things had been during those years of drinking. But now, here she was, happy and healthy, heading down the right path.

          Since a major tenet of the AA program is belief in a Higher Power, I asked her if she had renewed her relationship with God. She didn’t really answer me, but she did agree that she needed to turn her problems over to a Higher Power.

          Yet on the edge of the horizon, there was always that hole, waiting to snatch her from her sobriety.

God Does Answer Prayer - Val's story, Chap 14

I had been praying for Val for years. Praying that she quit drinking, that she quit doing drugs, that she quit letting losers move in with her.

I thought of all the good she had done in her short life. The mission trips to Mexico and Kenya. The nonprofit she spent hours and hours building only to watch it fail. The dogs she rescued. The two different houses she had bought and worked so hard to renovate.

          But through it all, she kept drinking. And driving while intoxicated. Even though she got two OWIs within a few years, she somehow never had an accident.

And I kept praying. Praying that her guardian angel wouldn’t give up on her. I believed that because she was such a caring person deep inside and she wanted so much to help others, the devil felt threatened by her. He made sure that bad things kept happening to her – the failed nonprofit, the OWIs, even all the illnesses and injuries from her childhood – as a way of trying to knock her down.

And I kept praying. Praying that Jesus would hold her in His hands, even though at times she denied Him.

In addition to her day job working from home, she started bartending a few nights a week. She said that she needed the money and also needed to get out of the house to socialize. In reality, it gave her a couple of nights to get drunk for free.

Until Thursday, January 26, 2023.

Years and years before, both my kids set me up on Google Maps so that I could see their location – or at least the location of their phones. They knew that I spied on them, but they never turned off the notification. Once, when my husband and I were on vacation, we were riding on a ferry across a canal in Virginia when Val texted me.

“Where are you?” she wrote.

It immediately dawned on me that she had been spying on me and saw that my location was in the middle of a body of water! So this worked both ways.

That Thursday night in January, like many nights before, I checked her location when I went to bed. She was at the bar.

          I had a bad feeling and started praying.

I woke up at two a.m. and checked her location again. Still at the bar. It was “bar time,” which probably meant that she was closing up and then driving clear across town to get home.

I lay awake praying for her through the night.

God, please watch over my baby girl. Please get her home safely. Please let her figure out that she needs help and that she needs to quit drinking. I am so sorry, Lord, that I failed her, that I didn’t shelter her more or come down on her harder when she messed up. If her drinking in any way is my fault, punish me, but please save her.

Or something like that.

          Early the next morning, as I dragged myself out of bed, I checked her location and saw she'd at least made it home. As I was groggily getting ready for work, one of her friends called me.

“Momma,” she said, “Val hit rock bottom last night; she wants to quit drinking and needs our help.”

Oh, dear God, heavenly Father. How can I ever thank You enough.         

~~~

I was scheduled to work all day, but I found a co-worker to cover for me in the afternoon. I texted Val as I was leaving the clinic around noon and asked what she was up to, totally playing dumb.

She texted me right back and asked me to call her.

She told me that she was done drinking, that she had finally realized how it was ruining her life, that she had so many things she wanted to do, but that with her drinking, she would never be able to do them. She said one of her friends was with her then, and another was coming over after work, and asked if I could come down too.

“Of course, Baby Girl,” I answered through tears.

I got home, told her step-dad what was going on, packed a bag, and drove the 45 miles to her house.

Her friends and I spent the weekend watching over her, keeping her hydrated and rested. We all knew that detoxing on your own could have serious consequences, even death, but she refused to go to the ER.

We cleaned her house from top to bottom, played with her dogs, and watched sappy movies. She looked up AA meetings in the area and called around to rehab centers. She made lists of things she wanted to do and things she needed to do to get sober and stay that way.

By Monday morning, she was still tired, but her headache and stomachache were gone. She finally felt like eating a little bit. She had found a women’s AA group and was excited to go to her first meeting.

God always answers prayer, and sometimes He even answers in the exact way we hoped. 

On the Final Trip to Kenya - Val's Story, Chap 13, part 2

All our previous trips to Kenya involved at least some volunteer work. We ambitiously built a chicken coop, taught about the life cycle of chickens and rabbits at one of the schools, or cleaned storage rooms at the volunteer house. Other times, we talked with our partners in Nairobi about how to proceed with current and future projects to help various schools, orphanages, or villages. With Val’s nonprofit no longer viable, we told our Kenyan friends this trip would be just our vacation.

Our flights into Nairobi always arrive late at night, usually around midnight. Again, just like on all the other trips, we got to our accommodation in the wee hours of the morning, slept for a couple of hours, got up by noon, and started our day. We spent the first day shopping for supplies (mostly snacks) and visiting with our friends who run their own nonprofit there.

          Early the next morning, we piled into the safari van for the long ride out to the Maasai Mara. We weren’t going on safari this time; we’d all done that enough times. We just wanted to be out on the African plains, relaxing at the safari camp and enjoying the views. And for Val, drinking Tusker, the Kenyan beer.

          One night we sat outside watching the beautiful sunset, the crepuscular rays of light reaching to heaven. Val told us that when she was a little kid and saw those glowing yellow-orange rays in the sky, she thought they were people’s souls in Manila envelopes ascending to heaven.    

          At the time, we laughed, thinking it was pretty silly. But three years later, I would never look at a sunset the same way.

~~~

 The entire time we were in Africa, Val continued to drink every chance she got. Whether we were going out for dinner or stopping for a snack at a place with Wi-Fi we could use, she ordered a drink or two. A few times she was out until late at night with our friends.

          After a few days in Nairobi, we took the short plane flight to the coastal city of Mombasa, where Val had rented us an Airbnb for a few days. The view of the Indian Ocean outside of our door was breathtaking. Unfortunately, we couldn’t leave that door open as the neighborhood monkeys would run inside to scavenge any food we had laid out. We thought they were cute at first, but their boldness soon got on our nerves.

          Our first afternoon there, we walked to a beachside bar for drinks, then on to a store for groceries. Val bought a liter bottle of gin and a bottle of wine. Denise may have had a drink or two, while I only had sips, but all of the alcohol was gone within two days.

          It seemed like such a waste to me. We had such a good time – walking along the beach, meeting a group of boys who showed us starfish, sea anemones, and other sea creatures, taking a glass-bottomed boat ride out to a sand bar. So much to take in and enjoy. Why did Val feel she needed to be drunk the entire time?

          She told me that this was her vacation and she wanted to enjoy herself. When I looked at her disheveled hair and puffy face every morning, I couldn’t believe that this was what fun meant to her.    

         On our last night at the beach, we went out to eat at a nice restaurant and had a delicious meal. Denise and I each had a glass of wine, while Val powered through an entire arsenal of whatever she was drinking.

When we got back to the rental, it was already late, but Val insisted on walking to the bar a block away. Even though I had already gotten ready for bed, I threw my clothes back on and went with her, much to her wrath.

I sat quietly at the bar, nursing a glass of pineapple juice, while she shot pool and did shots with the three young men there. They were respectful, even when Val practically threw herself at them. They would look my way, understanding that Momma Bear was on duty.

When it was time for the bar to shut down, someone offered to get us a taxi. I told him we were staying only a block away and would make it just fine. I managed to trip on the sill of the doorway as we were leaving, while somehow Val walked just fine. That is, until we were halfway to the cottage, and she looked up to gaze at the carpet of stars in the black sky above us.

          She laughed as she lost her balance, and I caught her.

          We flew back to Nairobi the next day and back home two days later. I was so thankful my friend Denise had come on the trip for support, and I'd never been happier to get my feet back on American soil. At least once a day while we were in Kenya, a horrible question ran through my brain. How would we get my daughter’s body home if she dies of alcohol poisoning while halfway around the world?