Arlene M.

Good morning, everybody. Again,

I have the pleasure of introducing Arlene M who came to us from Rochester, is our keynote speaker. This morning I called Arlene. She was just delighted. She was overwhelmed that I had sought to call her and I had several very nice

telephone conversations, whether which were like having many meetings. It was always uplifting every time I called. Arlene Arlene has worked on public information. She was Institute Institutions coordinator for five years in our New York N She has started several al Anon, I'm sorry, alotine groups in the Rochester area.

This is her last year as delegate in our New York North area and she is the first minority delegate.

And best of all, she's mother of 10

and all children by the same man. That was important, very important to put that in there.

And she's been an L team and I keep going else I got Lt. on the brain. I've been really thinking about Altin the last couple of days. That's why it's on the brain. And I really talked to an L teen person last night, a 17 year old, for quite a while, and I got so much insight that I can hardly get out of my mind to get on with what else I'm supposed to be doing here.

So, Eileen, would you please step up for your corsage?

I'll try not to poke you

colors with this. Yeah,

No, I think it'll be all right. Type the ludge, right? There's just a little glass. Yeah, they'll work.

Take time here to get this on here. Well,

OK, thank you.

Hi, My name is Arlene Merriweather and I'm and I love an alcoholic.

I had Bonnie put that in about all by the same man because my husband, while he was drinking, said until he got sober he never knew who those kids were that were running around the house.

He didn't know them by name. He wondered if they were neighbors, children. I tried to convince them, but of course you know how that is when they're drinking.

I give my last name because my husband broke my anonymity many years ago.

Although I tried to hide

and I didn't want anybody to know on my jobs or anywhere I was, everybody knew.

I'd like to tell you first a little bit about me.

I was born and raised in Rochester, NY and there's very few Rochesterians that are still there and remain there

at that time. It was a time you could leave your doors open, your windows open.

You weren't afraid of anybody coming in and doing anything to you.

It was safe.

You had family that lived close, they lived all around you

and it was peaceful to know that you had that safeness there.

Of course it isn't too much like that today, but I like to reflect back to those times because they were good times.

It was good to know that you had somebody there for you and that you had people that cared.

My father and mother

lived right around the corner for me. This was my first rejection. They gave me away when I was six months to an aunt, an uncle to raise me.

And I remember I was about four years old and they had a social worker come to the house

and she tried to fool me. She said. How would you like to be Arlene Bradley?

I knew my mother and father's last name was Jackson.

I said no, I want my own mother and my own father and I want to be a Jackson.

So she told my aunt don't adopt her,

she knows too much right now

but many years. I always wondered why they chose to give their oldest child away

and my father explained to me that it was because they were getting ready to separate

and they didn't want me to have to go into a home.

Now mind you these people never did separate

so it took me a long time after

coming into Al Anon to make amends into really understand what had taken place.

I also felt rejected by a boyfriend.

His name was Bozo.

He was from Louisiana and he was a Creole, and I thought this was neat. I had somebody that could speak French too. He was handsome, really nice, I thought.

He gave me a bicycle, he gave me a typewriter, he gave me all kinds of things, and I was really infatuated with this guy. Our families were very close and they just had the wedding all set up for, you know, about seven years in advance.

And one day Bozo told me, he said. I'm sorry, but

I found somebody else

and I said what happened? Why are you leaving me?

He said. I want a woman with a 22 inch waist and I hadn't had that since I was born so

I knew I didn't qualify

but it hurt me very bad and it really set me back.

I worried about this a long time,

but I had nobody to talk to about it because they always said he would come back. He would come back. But Bozo is still drinking today and he's left his wife and children and maybe that's the best thing that happened. Our higher power knows.

I met my husband

while he was standing on a corner leaning against a pole.

Now, that should have told me something,

but I was naive because I was brought up very sheltered.

You see, I know what it's like to have everything and I know what it's like to have nothing.

And my husband showed me what it was like. They had nothing.

He was leaning on a pole and I was coming home from school and he said, I'm going to marry you someday. And

that made me happy. You see, he was from Chicago. And I figured, boy, somebody from Chicago, not just little Rochester, he must know what he's talking about. And he had a suit on. Boys in Rochester wore their jeans and they had their Plaid shirts. And I mean, they weren't sharp. And this guy knew how to say different words that I never heard, like, dig it, you know, baby, and this kind of stuff. And I was really

enthused by a guy that knew how to say these kind of things

because the other files I liked that I knew and went to school where they would say, hi, Arlene, can I carry your books? When can I come over and see you? And they were just so mild, so make and so, you know, they just weren't that hip kind of guy.

As he was leaning against the pole,

he pulled out a ring and he said this is going to be yours someday. He said, how about taking it now? And of course I said yes, yes.

And he put it back on his finger and hasn't given it to me yet.

But this was love to me. You see, I didn't know the meaning of love,

although my family

showed me love

and I can't. Even though all of my my uncles drink.

My grandfather drinked. My father drinked a lot, but he was a nice drinker. He would come in and give us money when he got to him. So I like this kind of guy. So I just figured anybody to drink gives you money. My uncles did the same thing. They come in, they were drunk. My aunt would just put them on the couch, lay them down, they throw all their money on the floor and we'd pick it up.

So I said, this is good.

So I had never seen any other kind of drinking person. And the women in our family, it's funny, but none of them dreamed but one. And that cousin, we sort of hit her upstairs when she'd come until she woke up and they would throw her right out the door. But the woman didn't drink that much. The women were always watching out for the drinking family members, making sure nobody would look at them, that they could come in and lay down around the house. And they tried to protect me and not let me know have them out of the house by the time I'd get

when I tell him I was sneaky I come and sneak and see him all lying there. But I love them because I want that money on the floor and I want to get make sure I got it before they left and I did.

But back to John.

I don't want to tell too much about him because he doesn't remember too much, especially if he doesn't remember our children.

But he asked me to marry him and my family fell apart, The neighborhood fell apart. Everybody knew about him, but I refused to accept that I could not change this man.

I figured if I gave him the love,

the caring, if I took care of him, showed him the way that he would love me back, the way I loved him.

I tried to make him happy by having my family buy him cars,

by having them give him money. Could you see the man refused to work? I that didn't seem to ring a bell, although my father worked, my uncles worked, everybody worked. But I figured someday he would work. So I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

He was my God.

Even though I was raised in the Baptist Church and I knew above God. This to me was a living God because to me He was so sharp. He had it all together, I thought.

And then

I remember his sister coming over and giving me a wedding ring, an engagement ring

that didn't click. Why didn't John do it? But I never asked the question. I just figured family sticks together

and then I remember her

buying my gown that I was to wear that night of my wedding.

After we went home, of course,

and that didn't stay.

Now he drove in front of the house with some other people

and he was leaning in the car

on the way to the wedding.

My father and my uncle, who had raised me, refused to come in the wedding.

They sat in a car and cried. My mother and my aunt came into there and cried,

but I didn't think anything was about. I thought they just primed because they were so happy,

but they knew

and I didn't know.

After the wedding,

Dan took me home to his mother's house.

You heard that before last night.

Took me to his mother's house and I went and I get all prettied up, I thought.

And he said he was throwing out to get my luggage from my house because I lived a few blocks away.

And I awaited,

and I waited,

and I waited, and I waited

and knock him at the door. And it was his mother.

I said, where's Jan? She said he'll be here. That was about four in the morning.

Finally, about 7:00 in the morning, John came with my suitcases,

drunk as a skunk

threw them over. I said, where have you been? He said. I have been out with my friends celebrating our wedding,

but I accepted that because I knew he'd change after.

I knew that if I was just good enough, dressed nice enough, bought the right kind of perfumes,

had the right makeup on, that someday John would just accept and be so happy to have me as a wife.

Well,

we started having children

and we started having pain. At least I did.

The holidays were terrible.

I remember trees being knocked down, Christmas trees, and my little kids all getting together, setting up the Christmas tree

while the father fell asleep and wondering if he'd get back up and knock it back down again.

I remember him arguing, fighting with the children and me around the holidays. Seemed like holidays. He seemed to get worse and I never could figure that out because these were happy times as I was coming up and I couldn't figure out why they were so unhappy for him, not realizing that his home life had been bad, that he had. Father was a minister, but always carried his liquor in his briefcase.

That his mother had been through the same kinds of things.

I didn't know that then.

I might have could have understood a little bit.

One thing I did know,

there was no help for me out there.

You see, they didn't. If they had al Anon, it wasn't around me

and nobody spoke of it because I'll tell you one thing, in the black community, they thought you didn't let other people know what was going on in your home.

You kept it quiet. They knew anyhow, but we just tried to keep it quiet.

We didn't want others to know the pain. You didn't even tell your minister the pain. You didn't tell anybody the pain. You held it all in.

I didn't know people that separated or left their husbands. There was nobody around me that did that. Everybody stayed together. I didn't know that they were getting beat up, they were getting misused. I didn't know their lifestyles were that bad until after. But they refused to leave.

They stayed. They stayed in those homes and they went through the terror. So I believe that I should too. And I did stay.

I searched all over for help.

I even went to libraries. There was number literature there. The only thing there was how not to drink so much. What to drink

and different things like there was nothing

on somebody elses drinking affecting the family or the wife or the children. Nothing in the libraries. And I was a person raised to go to libraries. I went to counselors. The counselors kept telling me

you can't change him, you have to leave. They were on the right course, but they never mentioned Al Anon. They never mentioned a program

where people were out there to help me

and I just couldn't believe that they couldn't be changed hard. Had my uncle used to say soft rear. I had one of those hard heads.

I went to doctors, they only gave me pills,

pills to calm me down. I wanted pills to calm him down.

Ultimately, I used to sneak the pills in his coffee

and I had a wide awake drunk. A wide awake drunk

and I'm the only one that was passing out because I was so tired.

I would think different ways, different things to do. I call the police when he take the car and go and say pick him up. He's drunk driving. The police never did that. They had more to do than run around looking for him.

I'd be there with a broom when he came in to hit him, but he'd always grab the broom. I never did hit him. My aim was very bad.

My children saw all this

and one of my daughter's said to me one day, she said Mama. She said we never blame daddy,

but we blamed you. And I said why Pi? Why would you blame me? She said because we thought you knew better,

you weren't drinking.

That really got me,

that really stopped me. But if I hadn't been an al Anon, I couldn't have accepted that. But I did then, and I could see back

that there were changes that could have been made, but I wasn't ready to make them. I went to family and I had friends, Friends. I couldn't come over my house, but I could go over their house because they just didn't want to be around a home where there was somebody cussing and swearing and mistreating everybody and not knowing how to even take care of himself and falling out on the floor and knocking over lamps and things like that. I even got beautiful places to stay. We had gorgeous townhouses.

They were pretty, but they meant nothing.

Material things meant nothing. When you have somebody in there that is destroying everything and destroying themselves too, and everybody else around them,

they meant nothing.

A lot of pain.

I was in my own prison.

I had built a prison of my own,

and do you know I had the key to get out of that prison and wouldn't let myself out.

I think that's why I went into institutions, because when I visited the prisons and the jails and I talked with the fellows in there, one of them was my son, who had never heard my story. And I saw him crying and I talked with them and I told them how

much important it was, how much more important to stay out, how much people love them and needed them out. And what were they doing in there with master's degrees, with doctorates

And all the women wonder where the men are there in jail. They're in prison if you're looking for them, a lot of them,

but they don't wish to remain on the outside.

And that pained me. But I knew I could identify because of my own prison. I was out here free to make any choices I wanted to.

I had family, I knew people,

but still in awe. I was not ready to make that choice

and you've got to be ready, able and willing, and that was not a part of me. I wanted to change him. He was my God.

It was a very painful time

and during this time his brother got killed

by one of his friends. They were sitting together

and after his brother, younger brother got killed, his drinking became worse and worse, and we suffered more and more from that. You see, I realized that with a disease, the more that's on them, the more they take out on everybody else around them

and nobody. I think I knew two people that mentioned that they were an AA at that time, only two, and they weren't in our neighborhood,

so I wouldn't know

and we didn't know. And of course I couldn't have gotten them there anyway, as you all know.

And then I went to work every day.

I work for City school District where I will still work. 23 years there

and that was my only outlet to go to work.

I was insane, but I was around people that I thought were saying didn't know they were going through the same thing. I guess we were all crazy together

and I love my job because I was working with teenagers,

I was working with their families. I could identify with their hurt and their pain because I was going through it

and we had a secretary. And I'll tell you, I have a special love for secretaries

and any job, if you get in with the secretary of the custodian, you've got it made.

And the secretary one day, Shirley said to me, she said, Arlene, have you had enough?

And I was crying.

You see, I used to cry alone, but the pain was so bad it came a time when I had to cry everywhere I went.

She saw the tears, she saw the pain, and she said there's a place to go at 1:00 today. Will you go with me?

I was immorally apprehensive, but I trusted her.

And isn't the greatest thing in the world is to trust somebody?

I trusted Shirley. 1:00 I was ready

and we went right across the street into this basement of a church, and I looked around

and there were about eight women sitting around it. At that time, there weren't many men in the program. I was so glad the men had finally come in and realized that they had the same kind of problems, too. It's great to know that.

And they were all sitting there. They were dressed up, they looked good, their hair was in place. They were just bouncy. They were going to play golf. They were going here and there. And all I could think of while I looked at them was I'm going home to John. What's going to happen when I leave here?

Well, they gave me a lot of literature

and they gave me that warm welcome,

and they gave me those

love, those thoughts of love. You could feel the love penetrating that. They understood. And here I am the only black person in the room. And I said to myself, wow,

Martin Luther King's dream has finally come true. Everybody's overcome but me

and I sit there and I listened and they told me just keep coming back and listening.

I really wanted to pour out. I wanted to let him know what was home, but my children were going through what I was going through with. I want them to tell me what I should do when they did not tell me what I should do.

But they talked about the medium, what they had done.

They told me about the gratitude they had for the program. And I listened. I didn't really understand. All of it didn't sink through because I was waiting for that one answer. How do you get rid of them? Do you kill them?

How do you do that and get away with it and not have to go to jail?

But they didn't tell me. They just said keep coming back. It works

and I said it works OK

and from then on

I start coming back and I still didn't hear the answer but they told me one thing. They said you can decide not to decide. Wow,

that was a release,

part of my getting out of my prison. I didn't have to decide today.

I could think about it, I could go over it, but I didn't have to make that decision to leave today. And I it just opened up a whole new world. They told me it was a disease. Finally, I had an answer to why he draped so much. He couldn't help but not drink.

That was all he could do and I wanted to know why. I thought it was me or all these children because my father-in-law said if you have over five that they'll start drinking and I had ten. My God,

and they told me about the three CS and you all know the three C's. They really helped. Can't clear it,

It didn't 'cause it. You can't control it. Those three things stuck with my packet full of literature, which I took home

threw on the coffee table for him to read,

thinking this is going to hit it. If he reads this, he'll understand me.

He piled it all up, tore it up, threw it in the garbage. I had to give more literature. I didn't have any more,

but I was still working on him and not me,

but I could decide not to decide.

They taught me about the slogans and the main, what I like. And this is what I heard after being in the program. How important is it?

How important is it that I make that decision right now?

How important is it that I let myself out of this self-made prison right now

because I'm only living in today?

I can look back to the past but not dwell on it,

not look to the future, but just this 24 hours and I could decide not to decide. So I needed that barrier up there for me.

They said listen and learn. And you'll notice many times when you go to meetings and you see people coming in, how they want to just spill it out. Let everybody know. You just got to let somebody know, man, this isn't the way it's supposed to be. Tell me something. But you listen and learn

and you finally hear somebody that you can identify with,

somebody that has been in your footsteps,

and then you learn from that.

They taught me those 12 steps of recovery. People will tell you about, oh, I took the 1st and the 3rd and the 5th and the 7th. Honey, you've got to reach each step because if you don't go up every one of those 12 steps, you're going to trip.

You've got to climb each one and it takes time.

Nothing happens overnight. It's within the 24 hours. In every problem in my life,

I take the 12 steps and apply it. If it's work related, then I'm not getting along with somebody. That's very rare. I apply the 12 steps

to each one of my problems.

It carries me through and the traditions, the Trump traditions helped me to understand my meanings. And if somebody seems to be talking to much or I'm not liking what they're saying and I feel like I should just stop them. I realized

that I have 12 traditions to abide from and I need to listen and know what they mean and give others a chance. And if they talk too much, maybe they need to get it out then. And it's OK except them for where they're at.

We have to learn. And in Al Anon, we learn to accept people for where they're at.

Ellen I brought order into my life.

I began to be able to put things into its right perspective

after I got an al Anon. I was able to go back to college after after having ten children. I was in college with my oldest daughter at Nazareth and I see her through the hall. She'd say hi mommy. I'd say hi 5 and it was so good

but so good to go back. I went to Brockport and I was learning and I remember one professor saying to me and he said to the class,

he said if you want a good self concept you have to be able to get up in the morning and look at yourself naked in a mirror and feel good about yourself. I haven't been able to do that yet.

He has tried it and he said it works. My God, the man weighs about 200 lbs and if it works for him, it'll work for anybody. He needs a professor and I believe him.

And now and then

I learned to meditate. You know, many of us don't know how to meditate when we come to Allen because we've been meditating on, on the the Alcoholics along and the people in our lives that aren't doing the things we want them to do. And you know what I do? And it helps. If anything or anybody is bothering me,

I take a different color balloon and I put them inside of it

and I tell them what I don't like about them

and I set them up to my higher power.

If I'm real mad, they go on a black balloon.

If I'm not so mad they might go in a yellow balloon.

Just different colors. My favorite color is fuchsia

and I'll send them ones that just are OK in the future balloons,

but that helps and I let it go. That was the only way of detachment. I can learn them

because it's so hard to detach with love.

I remember when I decided to decide not to live like I was living and not to allow my children

the pain that they had experienced.

I told John I was leaving. He said good.

We had a beautiful townhouse then and I was just so happy in it. I love my place

but I knew I couldn't live there. My curtains were always closed. I was so scared. People were peeking in, although they had those curtains closed and a lot of them are in a A today in Al Anon. It works.

I got my nephews and everybody to help me move. I got the apartment ready to go. Still hoping that he would say OK, I'm going to change for you Arlene.

He laid there on the grass with a bottle of voucher.

He said, wait a minute, let me put the last thing on, and that was the bed. Isn't that's anonymous in some way? The bed went on last. He helped put it there, went back and laid down in his pajamas, all the neighbors out there looking, waving goodbye.

I said well this is it

and the children were in the man with me and we all drove off to our new apartment.

A few days later,

he entered into a treatment center

and his own

He's been 14 years sober without a slip.

And I had nothing to do with it.

All the talking,

all the praying until I let go and really let God. Nothing worked

and then after he got out, stayed the 30 days and about a year later we decided to go back together.

And I'm going to tell you one thing,

there still is some issues that have to be resolved. Even if a person is drinking or not. There was issues to be resolved in me and I hadn't dealt with them. Do you realize we still couldn't communicate and he was sober and I was in a program. We still didn't have that communication.

We had love, no communication.

Sex was even going down. I mean, there was no communication,

so we decided to separate

and it was mutual.

I needed to find me and he needed to find him. We were so young when we married and all I knew was that those kids were his. He was starting to accept them saying well that one does look a little bit like me and that one does act a little bit about like me

and was OK.

So he went and got an apartment

and me and the children stayed in our place and it was good. Now he came over about every other day bringing out stuff. He loves to cook.

I don't like to cook anymore. I cooked enough,

but he brought over food and he'd stay a minute and he would leave.

And that happened about, that's been about six years now.

How it is today. You know, I want to tell you if there's any newcomers in this room and I don't know. And I call a newcomer less than a year to me because there's so much to learn.

How many newcomers are here?

You stick with it, it works.

You are able to get out of your prison

yourself made prison.

There are great advantages in this program. There is love, there is trust, there is hope, and you even find God.

I'm glad that you never understood before.

A loving person that opens up doors for you. Stay in it. You're not going to get the answers today. You're not going to get them six months. But you do like I do you. You go. You help make the coffee,

you have put out the literature, you do the little things and you keep coming back.

And the man, you'll feel like a minority, like I did, being the only black in the room. But that's OK because you become strong and you find out where I won. There is no color. There's no barriers in Alien Man. There's just us. I went to Mississippi to visit my daughter. Her husband was just finishing doing his. He's a surgeon now. He was just finishing up in the service

and I said I'm going to a meeting. My daughter's. Oh, you're going in the city to a meeting? Mama, you don't know what to expect. I said yeah, I'm going. She said, well, I'm going with you.

I said, OK, bye, come on, let's go. And we went, Do you know there were so many black people in that meeting? It was a beautiful meeting, and I was so welcome anywhere. Everywhere you go there is love

because we learn to the eyes of the program and other people lot of love. Get yourself a sponsor. I'm telling you, it's so important.

Get somebody you can talk to, not just a close member of that family, not your wife or your husband or your aunt or uncle or mother. Get somebody, especially somebody not just like you,

somebody a little different.

And my sponsors like that,

She's special. I can call her 123 in the morning. Of course, don't call me that time. I have my tape on. But get a sponsor. You can call anytime of the night,

anytime of the day or night. That's going to spend time with you that you can go and do your inventory with. Get somebody you can trust.

There are people in this program you can trust. They wouldn't be here if you couldn't. If you couldn't trust them, They can't stay that long.

Get a seasoned member. I don't like that word. Alzheimer's. We're seasoned. I've been in here 15 1/2 years and I'm a seasoned member.

Keep going to your meetings. Try the different meanings. Sit back, listen and learn at those meetings. Go to your AA. Please attend open AA meetings. You get so much out of them. You learn why, you learn the reasons, and they're so outspoken in their meanings. I love it because they just let it go. When they feel shitty, they say they feel shitty. We say in a different way. I feel awful, but they feel shitty and they let people know.

Hear that

I need to hear the correct words

instead of stop behind as my uncle said I used to have. I have a soft ass. I want to hear that.

Drop into those AA meetings. Do that for yourself.

Can't do it for yourself. Do it for me because you learn a lot and you'll understand more. You know, I think about the adult children

and I have spoken that a lot about children meanings. Although my father was a passive drinker and he gave out money during his drinking and he didn't beat any of us. Still, I saw what my husband put my children through that I allowed him to put them through. You see I still have the keys. I could have gotten out of that prison, but waiting for him to change

it was very hard.

But the adult children

have really been to a lot. There's a lot of pain there.

There's a lot of lack of trust there. They have been hurt so deeply by people they thought should love them and hold them,

people that were there in their lives, that that the higher power put their they thought they put them there for to love them and give them the strength and hope they needed. These people were sick too, and they couldn't do it. And the adult children had to realize that we just didn't know any better,

that I didn't know any better, that my focus wasn't right. And my husband had a disease. He was wrapped around the bottle and I was wrapped around him. We couldn't get apart. They have to understand my sickness. When somebody first told me that I was insane, I hated it. But I was, and I think I am today in some areas, but that's okay because I have a fellowship to help me through the insanity.

We have to let the adult children express themselves. They have gone through many terrifying experiences.

One of my youngest daughter just told me recently that a cousin whom I trusted that I let babysat had violated her, that that just killed me. It tore me apart to think that this cousin whom I trusted so much, who would talk to me and give me comfort, who was in a program,

that he had violated her.

But I had to learn to forgive him,

and I had to learn my to forgive myself for allowing it to happen. But at least she trusted me enough to tell me. If she didn't tell me then I know now and I know to watch out for these things.

Service is great.

When I was institutional coordinator, as I said, I made those prisons and I went to those drug places and I work at a job today keeping parenting classes in the drunk places, in the jails, in the schools. Seven teachers working with me and we love it

and I hope I'm opening some doors for them

and I'm letting them know. Also, I'm slipping in our program so they know they're out there. My boss doesn't know that, but that's OK. But she doesn't know. Doesn't hurt her,

but I'm trying to help.

I've learned that

I don't say I have problems anymore.

I have many, many challenges.

I had been through many, many challenges.

In 1982.

My daughter was coming out of the hospital. She had been to emergency and they her ear was hurting and they said, well, Anita, you come back in the morning because we're full.

It was about 10:30 at night. Around that time it was raining quite bad,

so she called me from the hospital and she said, mom, I'm going to walk home. I said, do you want me to come and get you? She said no. She said it's just right around the corner. I only live around the corner, Mommy. I can make it.

She'd call me the day before because it was coming close to Mother's Day and she asked me what? What would I like? Well, I love earrings and I said earrings, needy. I want a pair of earrings, she said. I'll get you some earrings.

So that night,

a little after 11, I got a phone call. They said rush right to the hospital

and when I rushed there,

I saw the DA, the assistant District Attorney. I wonder, I said, what's he doing there? That was the first one I saw.

They said a drunken driver accident.

My daughter stayed in a coma 21 days

and I went up to see her all the time but on that 21st day to hold her hand as I usually did when I ran in there they said don't you know? I said no what? She died 1/2 an hour ago

and all I could think of,

she was born

by the aid of a drunk

and she died by the aid of the girl.

But I was able to forgive that guy. You know, when we went for the hearing

and I expected a guy to come out there with a long beard and sloppy and somebody here with this young fella in tears, clean cut. We had to sit across from him and I was able to forgive him. All I wanted to know was did she say anything as he drove her the size of a football field and he got out and found out she was at the end of the car. A truck man he had,