The Lesson

I am 100 days sober and while that is a very big deal and a huge accomplishment, it is not the story. It is a side note to a much larger narrative.

My dad was an alcoholic and very abusive to my mother. I was the oldest and high school was especially hard on me. One spring night, my senior year, he came raging into my bedroom toppling my bed over, with me in it. I instinctively ran out the door, scared to death. I didn’t know it then but I had just left home for good.

I HATED him. I never wanted to have anything to do with him ever again.

But he persisted.

He would just show up at my college dorm because he was “passing through”, one- hundred and fifty miles from home. And then there were all the cards that he would send, signed in his chicken scrawl, XOXO Dad.

I worked my way through college and refused any help from him. After I graduated, I decided to move to California to be with my boyfriend. My dad bought me a mustang as a graduation present and offered to drive me across country. Somehow he got me to agree and every afternoon we would stop at some random bar and have a margarita. The one in KS is especially memorable. A Friday afternoon, a country bar with cowboys and Budweiser and a margarita that ended up in the microwave because the bartender had made it too frozen.

And that is how it began. My adult relationship with my dad. Sitting in bars drinking and talking. About everything.

I got to know my dad. His humor and grace. His kindness and generosity. His sadness and pain. His anger and his deep love. This outrageous contradiction of beauty that was my dad. And I forgave him.

There are so many memories and It seems like it was a much bigger part of my life, but in reality it was only a twelve year window. And it would end on the evening of September 23rd, 2000.

I had taken my dad on a trip to Scotland. It was a belated Father’s Day present. We had spent the day touring Edinburgh and after finishing dinner we headed back to the hotel bar. Per usual, he joked with the bartender before we settled in for one of our conversations. He told me the secret nicknames that he had for me and my sisters: the miracle baby, the birthday baby, The Allstate baby and the anniversary baby. They all corresponded to major life events when my mom got pregnant. Only I was different. The Miracle baby. My mom had had three miscarriages and was left with only 1/2 an ovary before she had me. I opened the floodgates to four daughters.

At one point he turned to me and confessed that he, had, had a pretty good life and he could go at any time and it would be ok. It was almost as if he knew; a prophecy.

The next morning we were in a head on collision and my dad, Cameron John McLean died in St. Andrew’s, Scotland; the land of golf and whiskey, his two favorite pastimes. The police collected all of our belongings and I would receive a report a few days later. My dad had never been to Scotland, he was born and raised in Detroit Michigan. Ironically that police station in Scotland was based on Detroit Rd. Crazy, it still gives me chill bumps. I believe it was a sign letting me know that he was okay. It was as if he had somehow orchestrated a perfect ending.

So here I am, 54 years old and 100 days sober. I will never have those same type of moments with my own children because I decided I no longer want the legacy of alcohol and it’s destruction in my life.

Next week will be 19 years since our accident and despite the fact that my dad was the root cause of so much pain and trauma in my life, I still desperately miss him. But the contradiction is that I also know he would have been so proud of me. He probably would of sent me a card congratulating me on my sobriety, something he could never quite grasp, signed with a big XOXO, DAD.

So here is the lesson for me in all of this:

We can still DEEPLY, DEEPLY LOVE, the ones that hurt us the most.

They make us who we are.