"We Have To Leave Dad"

Write a poem that begins just as the world tilts forward:

Just as the world tilts forward

I knew I could live with this man

The support was helping me

He was going to go back to treatment

He promised. Our baby is doing better now

I could live with this man

~

Then came, "We have to leave dad!"

Who said that? Our daughter?

She saw that we couldn't stay

She saw that it wasn't working

She saw that he couldn't be sober

and off drugs, especially marijuana

He said, "I can't stop smoking pot

and that leads me back to the booze"

He was in treatment four times now.

They say it can take a while.

~

I had been telling our daughter

I'm the mom, now you go play

I will take care of your brother

Don't worry about it, I will do it

Go play, I'm the mom, I know

what to do. You go play.

But was I mom, and did I know?

Was our living in this way

in the best interest of our children?

~

If it were me alone, I could do it

But it wasn't just me, it was me

and two small children. A baby

that had almost died at one month

Him almost dying got me into recovery

and now it was time to leave his dad

again. Only this time it would be

the end of our marriage. I knew that

and so did he!

~

Years later, he would thank me for raising

our children. He died when our daughter

was eighteen. Our son was fifteen.

He was only forty-six years old when

he died from his addiction. He died from

a liquid morphine overdose. Our children

went to a support group for children of

alcoholics. They benefited from years

of that support, along with a sober

mother, and her sober friends and family.

~

And just as the world tilts forward

there are others with a similar addiction

my younger brothers, a stepdaughter,

a grandson, and we learned we can

continue to love them and we can

pray for them. That is what we can do.

~

Then we have many others that have

joined us in recovery, and a few that

haven't needed to join in recovery.

There childhood support helped

them to be successful adults at

ages forty-seven and fifty now!

They are both older than their dad

when he died from his addiction.