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Life After Life Series:

Part I    

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Part II:                                                     CODA: Serving My Higher Power elevates my life above a world in perpetual crisis                       Soundtrack

CODA

Serving My Higher Power elevates my life above a world in perpetual crisis

 

1. California

 

 

There was a joke that circulates around the rooms of recovery:

 

CODA 1: “You know that just before you die your life flashes in front of you?”

 

CODA 2: “Yes”

 

CODA 1: Well when a codependent dies someone else’s life flashes in front of them

 

CODA in music is a term used primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece or a movement to an end. [3] 

 

My journey in CODA Recovery and passage which effectively brought my relationship as superficial as it was with my family to an end began while residing in the San Francisco Bay area where I was groomed at a young age to participate in a family owned business. I remember my middle aged mother attending school conferences in mini skirts and long white boots like Nancy Sinatra and I was so embarrassed that she was flaunting her sexuality with the principal that I could just die.

 

I didn’t know my father until much later in life around the time I was in my mid thirties because my mother left with me and my sister and fled under the cover of darkness driving from Albuquerque to the West Coast one night. Persons attempting the same stunt now are subjected to amber alerts and are arrested for kidnapping. 

 

I worked very hard for my family and helped rescue the business from a pending bankruptcy after my stepfather who was addicted to dental pain medicine went bananas and we had to serve him with a restraining order while he was seated in of all places in a dental examination chair.

 

My first husband chose to go on a fishing trip when our child was in the hospital instead of sitting in the ER with us. Then when I was expecting our second child. He partied in our home with his friends and one night to protect myself and my children I ordered all of his intoxicated and marijuana imbibing addicts to leave our home. He moved out and shortly thereafter we were divorced.

 

He rarely supported the rearing of our two children financially or otherwise and was eventually arrested in Colorado by the Federal Government for using the postal system to send and receive narcotics.

 

After many years of working very hard and building our company from a few to seventeen Round Table Pizza Stores throughout the Bay area my Mother informed me that she was inviting a degenerate gambler my brother Robert into the business which was her way to rescue Little Robert from his failures at UNLV and the gambling tables of Las Vegas. 

 

Robert was my Mothers’ pride and joy yet lethal in his aversion to assuming any responsibility for his actions. He flunked out of UNLV and had acquired an insatiable addiction for gambling and heavy drinking by the time he arrived back home on the company doorstep. Robert also dumped his long term girlfriend for another woman who happened to be the fiancé of his best friend on the soccer team.

 

I realized through my now ten years or so of attending CODA and participating in ALATOT meetings for my children that I had to leave.

 

I began to plan my work and work my plan and while I was contemplating my next career move in life and on the advice of my friends I reluctantly went online on Love at AOL and met someone.

 

He was also from Las Vegas and one evening my friend and I flew there and met him and his friends. We chatted online for about six months prior to our first date. Things went very well and I returned again for Thanksgiving of 2000 and then he flew up for Christmas and met my friends and my mother though ever briefly who had invited everyone over to her home for Christmas Eve but arrived very late and we did nothing but chat for a an hour and then leave. No cookies, No Hot Cider, No Christmas Tree, Nothing except her eccentricities and her wall to wall abstract paintings. 

 

My future husband returned several months later to my home and helped me move to Las Vegas from Fremont, California.

 

My now grown children were belligerent and wanted to remain in the house indefinitely. I instructed them that they had to be out by the next day as the home was already listed for sale. They reluctantly agreed and the seeds of their massive resentment that I would abandon them and leave the state of California to remarry after rearing them persist to this day and my relationship with both of them remains distant. My daughter doesn’t speak to me at all and she punished me by not inviting me to her wedding. My own sister and almost everyone in the family except my ex-husband kept the secret. My family was and remains great at keeping family secrets. 

 

My son does converse on occasion with me but usually when he is seeking something like most adult children the most recent was a request of gifts for his yet to be borne child out of wedlock with his live in girlfriend. I offered him the best gift I could by suggesting he attend church bless his relationship in holy matrimony and immediately Baptize his infant child. The phone went fuzzy and then the call was dropped.

 

I am most grateful for my CODA recovery as my daughter prior to cutting me off visited me and my future husband in his home in Las Vegas and arrived hung over and worse for the wear and then lit into me when I didn’t serve the typical Thanksgiving Menu that her grandmother {my mother} offered. She then returned home and allegedly informed the entirety of my family that I had joined a cult in Las Vegas due to the fact that my fiancé a practicing Catholic opened his spacious home and provided room and board for recovering alcoholics.

 

I didn’t know if she was referring to AA as a Cult, the Catholic Church as a Cult or both. In either case my grandfather after hearing the rumors visited Las Vegas with his new wife and toured our home to insure that I wasn’t held against my will. “Red” as my Grandfather was called died shortly thereafter at his home near Palm Springs. My sister called me suggesting that his wife was a Black Widow and she should be investigated. Meanwhile my Mother drove the alleged Black Widow to the bank near Santa Cruz where she proceeded to empty the contents out of the safe deposit boxes that were meant for us thereby allowing his now grieving widow to steal our inheritance.

 

This behavior was typical of my mother who gave things away to total strangers or competitors all the time like large swaths of our Pizza Delivery area simply because someone asked her.

 

The Cranberries-Everybody else is doing it so why can’t we?-1993.2

 

    Updated {2013.11.18}

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