Two Lives One Lifetime tells a story about generational addiction, written in a way to pique the interest of all generations. Two Lives One Lifetime chronicles the life of each individual family member and how addiction is the thread that weaves through their lives and intertwines each one. You will be drawn into how upbringing, successes, and failures shaped their lives, all written through the author's perspective as she lived it. When the cycle of addictive devastation is finally broken, emerge with Pat into a new life of struggles, decisions, and gifts that change a life through a spirituality which passes all understanding.

Two Lives One Lifetime

By PATRICIA A. REIHL

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2012 Patricia A. Reihl
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-6302-2

Contents

Chapter I. The Father..............................1Chapter II. The Mother.............................11Chapter III. The Child.............................23Chapter IV. The Husband............................31Chapter V. The Children............................39Chapter VI. The Struggle...........................55Chapter VII. The Decisions.........................61Chapter VIII. The Road Forward.....................71Chapter IX. The Gifts..............................77

Chapter One

The Father

Mine was not a horrible childhood. There were no beatings or physical cruelty, just no real communication. I guess that could be labeled psychological abuse. I'm not sure; it was always like that. In the early years, before the separation that alcoholism created in the family, there was a connection of sorts.

My father was a periodic alcoholic. At first, when I was a little girl, these periods of his alcoholism happened months apart and would last for a week or more. During those "dry days"—the days when he wasn't drinking or in the middle of another "bout"—he would take me places. In the winter, on Friday nights, we would go out for fried shrimp and a movie. When spring came, we would go to Coney Island on a Saturday and ride the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round and eat Nathan's hot dogs and custard. We would also take trips to see his friend "Frenchy," who owned a barber shop in Rockaway Beach, Queens. Frenchy was the nickname of Henri LeGrand, a Frenchman my father met after he served in the First World War and entered the vaudeville circuit.

Frenchy would come to our house for dinner every Thanksgiving and on these occasions ask my father to enter a sober lifestyle with him. The answer was never definitive, and the change never happened. (I mention this in relation to our trips, as it has great significance later in this work.) At some point, the companionship between my father and me just stopped; I'm not certain when or why. That is when the memories became dulled. The vivid ones involve his more frequent bouts with alcohol, the staggering, and my fear of his falling. As a family, we would go to visit my mother's relatives, who all lived in Long Island. As there was just our little family of three, we would spend holidays with them. During my childhood years, we took the subway from Brooklyn into Penn Station in New York to catch the train, and I remember being terrified that my father would stagger and fall off the subway platform. Sometimes he would take me to Sunday Mass and stand in the back of the church, weaving and smelling of alcohol. I was always conscious that someone would know. It was similar to my fear of bringing friends home, wondering if he would be drunk and had perhaps fallen and was lying on the floor.

When I wanted to bring a friend to our home, I had a signal set up with my mother: I would ring the bell twice, and if she answered with only one ring of the buzzer, it meant "do not bring anyone up to the apartment." These problems were the wall that began to separate me from others.

My father grew up as a middle child in a staunch Irish Catholic environment, with two brothers and no sisters. The elder brother died of tuberculosis in midlife, lying in a state hospital in Staten Island, New York; the younger went on to be a successful New York banker. Their lineage is very interesting. My grandmother's family came from County Caven, Ireland, and came to the United States, settling in New York. My grandfather's family came from Scotland. My paternal great-grandfather came to the United States via Ireland, also settling in New York. He became a Fenian, a member of the group fighting for the Irish cause. When he married my great-grandmother, they had ten children, my grandmother being the second youngest. She married my grandfather, who studied marine engineering at Cooper Union in New York. When my father was still very young, his father—who had purchased a tugboat in New York City—died in a tragic accident on the East River. He had two partners, and they were just starting the business when the tug was hit by an ocean liner leaving New York Harbor. My grandfather was below decks with one of the owners, and they both drowned. The third partner was above on deck and lived. Even though my grandmother sent divers down, his body was never recovered. That left my grandmother a single parent, living in an apartment in Brooklyn, raising three boys: Wiley, the eldest; Walter, my father; and Lester, the youngest. When Wiley died, my grandmother raised his daughter, my cousin, Virginia. To my knowledge, there was no alcoholism problem in the early years in this Irish Catholic family. However there is a question about Wiley's drinking, the disappearance of Virginia's mother and later my cousin Virginia's wine problem.

My grandmother was a lovely lady, as was my cousin. She kept an impeccably clean home, and Sunday dinner was a treat in that house. Even though it was just the two of them, every Sunday, they took the good china, silverware, linen, and crystal out of the closet, and promptly at 2:00 p.m., dinner was served. As a young child, I spent many a Saturday night at the house, as they would babysit for me, so I was often a part of that Sunday delight—roast beef with all the trimmings and luscious desserts. This is a tradition I carried into my children's family life for many years. One of the positive aspects of my life, I have learned as I write, is a sense of gratitude for those happenings and that relationship, which were free of tension and alcoholism.

I called my grandmother Nanna, and my memories of her are filled with warmth and love. She lived to be eighty-seven, and she died when I was eighteen. My cousin, Virginia, cared for her in her old age, grieving her death to the point that she suffered a mental breakdown. At the time, we were both working in a bank in Manhattan, thanks to our uncle Lester. Virginia was executive secretary to the chairman of the board, but she had totally lost touch with reality. I would see her leaving work walking, talking to herself, and wringing her hands. My mother was very good to Virginia and would have her over for dinner many nights. Sadly, however, by this time, my father's alcoholism had progressed to the point where he paid very little attention to Nanna's death or my cousin's grieving. I am also sure that at some point, his entire family was affected by his drinking.

The family never discussed feelings in my father's childhood home, and so silence became his method of communicating pleasure and displeasure. When his alcoholism became more prevalent, he disappeared physically, mentally, and spiritually. Although he never left home permanently, he stopped coming home for dinner, which had a profound emotional effect on me, as there were no siblings, and my mother's behavior was becoming inconsistent. He was a marine underwriter for an insurance company in Manhattan, and so it was easy for him to go to the bar after work. I remember as a young girl sitting on the stoop of our fourth-floor Brooklyn walkup apartment building, waiting for him to return from the day's work. The subway was four blocks from our building, and I would keep looking to see if he was coming. I would sit for long periods of time, and that situation marked the beginning of my memory of the emptiness I felt in my life, what I later called "the hole in my soul."

Many years later, I found myself doing the same thing...