It’s been nearly twenty years since the death of my father. I think about him often. Now that I’m in my 50s myself, his passing at the age of 59 seems particularly sad. I had a complicated relationship with my father, not uncommon for modern males who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century, when men were expected to devote themselves to the company they worked for at the expense of other aspects of the self, especially the inner life. Men have paid a heavy toll for the restrictive roles that our society has placed upon them, just as women have. This is not to say that men suffer more than women because of these restrictive roles, it is only to say that they indeed have suffered as well.
In many ways I look at my father as a tragic figure, tortured by both physical and mental torments, each of which I witnessed take a heavy toll. My father had the worst psoriasis I have ever seen. For most of his life his skin was covered with painful, itchy patches of dried skin that overtook his entire body. I only remember seeing him wear shorts or go swimming one time. And that one time, he had to answer a question about the way he looked. I can’t imagine how embarrassed he felt walking around like this all day every day, nor can I imagine the pain and discomfort he felt on a daily basis; how it affected his sleep, his mood, and general overall sense of well being. I see advertisements all the time for medical treatments they have today for psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. But forty years ago, the best treatments they had for the condition consisted of thick, smelly, tar-based salves, and exposure to UV light. For years my father only used Ivory soap because his dermatologist told him it was best for the psoriasis, only to be told twenty years later that it was actually making the condition worse. This seemed to be the norm back then.
Psychologically, my father struggled with addiction, ultimately succumbing to lung cancer because of his dependence on tobacco. He drank heavily as well, although like most men that struggle with alcohol dependence, he never really had any outward consequences from his drinking such as a DUI. But I do remember him coming home with a black eye because of a fist fight he had while drinking. As a child, I remember sitting with my father around a keg of beer as he drank with other men in the neighborhood. It occurred to me, even at a young age, that my father laughed and smiled a lot when he was drinking. My young psyche made note of that. Alcohol could actually transform a person’s emotions, something that appealed to me at a young age. There’s no doubt that my father used alcohol in the way that most people use it, as a social lubricant to heighten the enjoyment of a given event. There is also no question that he used alcohol as a way to try to medicate unpleasant, painful emotions, which at times seemed to overwhelm him and drive him into depressive states.
This brings us to trauma. After my father died I began hearing stories about things which my father never talked about, particularly the illness and death of his own father, who also died at a young age, years before I was born. I never heard my father say more than two or three words about his own father. The subject seemed to be so painful for him that he couldn’t even think about it. From what I’ve been able to piece together, his father, my grandfather, was beaten for crossing a picket line back in the 1940s to try to feed his family. As a result he sustained a brain injury that left him permanently changed. He suffered a series of strokes that left him almost completely immobile, leaving my father to have to carry him up a flight of stairs every night to put him to bed. I was also told that my grandfather’s inability to work left the rest of the family to have to deal with significant poverty, another thing that I believe greatly affected my father. These are the traumatic events that I know of, but I think most of the wounds that my father dealt with were never acknowledged, much less spoken about.
My father worked for the railroad for over thirty years. As a child, he would sometimes take me and my brother with him to look at the trains. I found the massive machines and the men who controlled them quite awe inspiring, and I think that in many ways my father felt the same. But as I got older I saw how hard the environment was on him and the other people who worked there. The demands placed on my father were unrelenting. He was on call 24 hours per day seven days a week. Even on his days off he would receive a phone call every couple of hours. Most weekends he still ended up at the office for one reason or another. His sleep was often disrupted in the middle of the night by a phone call telling him of a train derailment which he was required to investigate, no matter the time of night or the weather. Ultimately, one of these calls resulted in him having to investigate a train wreck during an ice storm in the middle of the night. He slipped on some ice, landed on his back, and was badly injured. Two weeks later they cleaned out his office and he was soon told his services were no longer needed. The company he’d devoted most of his waking hours to for nearly four decades treated him like a beast of burden that could no longer carry his load. He was summarily put out to pasture.
Some of the trauma my father experienced at the railroad was more acute. One day he came home from work white as a ghost. His eyes were red. I could tell he was fighting back tears. It took him some time to be able to verbalize what happened. One of his co-workers and friends was crushed between two trains. My father was one of the first to the scene, having to witness the horror of the man’s death as well as the aftermath. I don’t remember much about the days following this event, but I know that it’s unlikely he would have been offered time off to grieve, much less counseling. There are also those countless other times that my father had to investigate a car wreck that involved one of the company’s trains. There is no telling how the things he saw affected him, nor is there a way of knowing how continuous exposure to toxic chemicals spilled from derailed trains impacted his health and contributed to his early death.
Often, we sanitize the past with nostalgia, talking about how much better things were back in the day. Perhaps this is true in some regard, but when it comes to mental health, addiction, and addressing trauma, we are vastly improved from where we were thirty years ago. I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like for my father if he’d had lived at a time when society was more supportive of addressing and working through one’s trauma. Would he have been happier? Would his psoriasis been better? Would he have even lived longer and been able to experience being a grandfather for more than six months? Obviously, there is no way to know. We are products of the age that we are born into, for better or worse.
I’ve been fortunate enough through my own recovery to have the opportunity to work through aspects of my own adverse experiences. These events did not cause my addiction, but they certainly exacerbated it, driving me into an abyss so dark that I nearly died before my life even started. Instead, through abstinence based recovery, spiritual work, counseling, and various other healing arts, I have been given a life that I would not trade for anything.
Now, I would like to share some of that good fortune. Thanks to my silent partner and friend, I am proud to be able to offer The Prentice Browning Memorial Scholarship which will offer individuals the opportunity to address and begin healing their own trauma. I am opening up applications for a two week inpatient stay at The Bridge to Recovery, in Bowling Green, Kentucky. This scholarship will pay for the entire two weeks, and include help with aftercare as well. While all applications will be considered, this has been set up specifically for people who practice abstinence based sobriety and have at least one year sober. This means you must not be currently using alcohol, pot, opioids, or any substance that could result in you being arrested if you operate a motor vehicle while taking. This is not to invalidate any other version of recovery, but designed to keep the recipient and the group milieu safe and functioning. The person who receives the scholarship will need to be able to be off work for two weeks and provide their own transportation to the facility. They will also have to be screened by The Bridge to Recovery to make sure they are able to be admitted. If interested, here is the process for submitting. the application:
1.) Email me your basic information, name, age, family situation, work status, phone number, and email.
2.) Submit an essay via email (1 or 2 pages.) describing your history of counseling and therapy, drug and alcohol treatment, and journey of recovery. Also, if applicable, your sobriety date. This essay should also include an explanation of your financial situation, and why you are unable to afford treatment on your own. Most importantly, please describe why you are in need of trauma treatment. For those who would prefer another option, I will also do phone interviews with those who prefer this method. Just email me and we will set up a time to talk.
3.) I will be the one reading the applications and awarding the scholarship. I will also be working with The Bridge To Recovery to ensure that the recipient meets initial criteria. After the scholarship is awarded it will be dependent on the recipient meeting the admission requirements of the admissions team and clinicians at The Bridge to Recovery.
4.) Please send the applications and questions to the following email:
jeffbrowning0@gmail.com
Beginner's Mind, Writers Mind 