death in winter

I just heard the news today about a girl who died in three feet of water over the weekend. She had been at a party and left at about 5:00. It's unclear why she left, but the assumption is that alcohol and/or other drugs were involved both at the party and in her decision making.

What hits home about this story is that the girl attended my alma mater, Concord Academy.

I'm not sure the moral of the story. Is it: a) shit happens b) some folks just have bad luck c) God decided it was that girl's time d) I'm one lucky motherfucker it wasn't me e) all of the above?

How many times did I drink to dangerous levels of intoxication in the cold, snowy winters at CA? It seems like every Friday or Saturday night, I trudged along in all weather conditions to party at a clearing in the woods we called Eden, down by the Concord River. How easily it would have been for me to slip, and to die.

After one such night at Eden, a freshmen in my dorm had to be carried home. Kids snuck him up to his third-floor dormroom and put him in bed. There he proceeded to throw up on himself. The student proctor, a black belt in some martial art, also knew CPR and administered mouth-to-mouth resusitation while we woke up our dorm parent, who called 911. Our headmaster informed us a couple of days later that the kid had actually died--for 8 seconds--but the doctors had been able to bring him back to life. He was expelled. The last time I saw him was a year later, at a Grateful Dead show. He was not sober.

Another time, I took a friend of mine home to Vermont over a February long weekend. We walked across the street, through customs, and into Canada, where the Del Monty Bar serves kids who are tall enough to sit in bar stools. We got wasted on the stiffest, foulest Zombies--think Long Island Iced Tea made with rot gut rum and some juice--and stumbled back home in frigid, arctic weather. It couldn't have been more than zero degrees out. The snow squeaked. It was dry. Later, I would think of the story "To Build A Fire."

My friend, who was a lightweight, had to go be sick, so he went off behind the library and puked his guts out. I sat down in a snowbank. I began to feel very comfortable. I remembered learning about freezing to death in the snow, how it lulls you to sleep. I was feeling very sleepy. Would I have fallen asleep had my drunken companion not lumbered up the road? I don't know. I did have this vision of my dad driving down the road on his way to work the next morning and seeing me there, frozen, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I was glad that at least I didn't have to put him through that.

In Thailand, a friend of mine died after a relapse, or during the relapse. He was in his 60's, retired, trying to do the next right thing, reaching out and helping drugged out street kids. He drank, he died. People talked in meetings about the tragedy of it all. My sponsor finally said, "Better him than me. Okay?" I remember thinking it was harsh, but I kind of agreed. I felt my heart harden a little bit. There's not a lot of room for sentimentality with this fucking disease.

I don't feel "Better her than me" right now though. I'm grateful that it wasn't me, that I survived high school and the drinking/drug years that followed. But I'm not sure this gratitude is directly related to the sad passing of a stranger with whom I have only a slight connection.

There is no conclusion. It all sounds trite, everything I could try to say right here about HP or luck or fortune or tragedy. Only this: I'm grateful for life. Don't drink. Don't die. Go to meetings. Share on the blog. Help another drunk.