HE'S DEAD NOW BUT

He is dead now but he lives on in my heart.

Bill B. (not his real name) a tiny man, weather beaten by the ravages of alcohol was my sponsor in A.A. through the critical months prior to my getting and staying sober. When he picked me up to take to the Donwood for Alcohol treatment, he told my wife that he didn't think I would make it. I was too far along. How wrong he was! But it perhaps helped me to get my back up and prove him wrong.

This is not about me however, it is about the greatest guy I ever knew. I met him at an AA meeting, we made an immediate connection. He had a checkered life, which led to his consumption of 2 quarts of whiskey daily, and his withdrawal was very difficult, culminating in bugs on the wall, and other delusions. Jack has helped hundreds of alcoholics through AA, and in my eyes he was a saint! What a friend he was.

Jack and I drifted apart, since I was becoming more successful in battling my alcohol addiction. He was off helping others in his own way.

A few months later I heard that he was in hospital, and didn't have too long to live. I went to see him in his room. The first thing I saw as I walked into the room was Jack sitting on the bed with a tube through his mouth down into his stomach, siphoning the blood from a cancerous lesion, dripping into a jar under the bed. A tube was fastened into his arm feeding blood into his body to replace the blood he was losing. It was depressing for me, and as I said goodby to him, I felt that I was seeing him for the last time!

Months went by and I lost sight of Jack. I was so busy fighting my own addiction that there was no time for anyone or anything else. Then I ran into Jack"s doctor, who was also a recovering alcohol addict. He informed me that Jack had recovered and was back counselling alcohol abusers through AA. It appears that Jack had prayed to his "Higher Power" to give him more time to give to his work. Following this he got better!

His Doctor told me that it was indeed a miracle! There was no other explanation for it, and I concurred because definitely Jack was on his death bed. I will never question God or the forces of good again.

DON FELSTEAD