My Mom Died From Alcohol..

by Breanne Gugino
(NY)

My mom was an alcoholic long before I was born. I grew up thinking that it was normal for parents to drink vodka cocktails all night one after the other. My mom and dad divorced because of her abuse. At night my mom and stepdad would fight and yell and slam things because they were drunk. I grew up knowing that I would fight with them but they would never remember it in the morning. I would stay awake at night listening to them fight.

When I was a teenager I realized they had a problem, especially when things got violent. One night my stepfather broke down my locked door and hit me because I swore at him. This man had raised me and loved me like his own. I stopped living with them and tried to get them to admit they had a problem but they would not listen. It didn't matter that I left, they would not admit they were alcoholics and they would not quit.

They simply hid it when I came over, because of course I started talking to them anyways. I loved them despite their problem. Well they were always fully functioning until last year when my mom lost her job. My stepfather hadn't been working due to an injury he was in physical therapy for. When my mom lost her job everything went downhill. They didn't sleep well, they fought constantly and my mom became depressed and drank even more.

I tried to be there for her, but I had moved 2 hours away for school. Last Easter I went home to see them and I was shocked at how sick they looked. They shook, they couldn't think straight, my mom could not even walk without almost falling. I immediately called my Aunt and asked her if I was crazy or if they had really been that bad. She agreed and we tried to talk to them and tell them we were scared for their lives.

They shrugged it off, as always, and told me I was worrying too much. For the next month my mother didn't call me like she used to. I don't know if she was mad or scared but she kind of cut me off. I was busy and didn't pay enough attention to it. I got a call then one night that my mother had gone to the hospital after her hairdresser noticed terrible jaundice.

After a month of trying to bring her kidneys and liver back from almost complete failure she was sent home. I spent that month at her side every day off I had, though going through detox she was a very mean person. I thought her life was going to get better, she finally had to admit she had a problem.

Then she fell down in her driveway and went into a coma from the head trauma. On July 13th we had to take her off life support, as she had requested, and I sat there for holding her hand until she died. I watched her go, my mother that I had tried to save. My mother was taken from me because she was an alcoholic.

It is now 6 months later but it hurts as much as the day I watched her die. No one around me has lost a parent and no one has dealt with alcoholism so I feel very alone. I don't know what to do with my grief and pain, I cannot share my feelings with my stepdad because I do not want to hurt him more by talking about their addiction. He has stopped drinking and we are closer then ever at least. But no one understands and no one is there for me.

My mom, the one person I could go to when I was upset or stressed and just wanted to talk is gone now, and I am left trying to figure out how to make it through life without her. I have not married or had children and now she will never share that with me.