I checked in at the Hilton EL Conquistaor resort. War and rumours of war. I’ve just read about the American invasion of Mexico, their conquering of Mexico City and annexing of half the Mexico of the day, California, New Mexico, Texas and some of Arizona.
The first person I saw I recognised was my flamboyantly gay colleague from California. He’s was in deep conversation with a couple and by the time I’d checked in he was gone. I saw more I knew then, shaking hands, hugging, being welcomed and thoroughly feeling a part of. These were my people. My tribe. I stopped at the gift shop and bought a bathing suit having realized on the hot ride over I’d forgotten mine. Everywhere was air conditioning. Glorious air conditioning.
Tucson is a city in the desert with lots of trees and khacky shrubbery and cactus but also desert and bare high hills. Hard for me coming from the Canadian Rockies to call them mountains. I missed the emerald green forests of my home. The terrain and territory of this oonference spoke to survival. The land here was tough. Where I come from nativies have used words like ‘Comox’ which means abundance to describe their homeland. . Here it’s definitely a place where folk have carved out an existence and fought against the desert to make an existence.
40 degrees. I felt it after my shower walking to the teen banquet. The Conquistado resort is spread out. I’m in the second three floor building across from the main resort conference centre. The banquet was down the hill and I walked with a truly beautiful woman who was wearing white cowboy boots , white hat and baby blue frilly western dress.
“You still have the tag on your cowboy hat,” I said.
“I know ,’ she said , “I wasn’t strong enough to break the tie. Do you think you could do it.”
I was glad to, Helping a beautiful young lady in distress does an man’s heart good. Following her I met up with my friends of years, the quite handsome, tall John with his loving beatuiful wife. They were with another couple. I was now part of a group of 6, maybe the oldest with the beauty queen cowgirl, by far the youngest. We headed down to the banquet where all sorts of friendship bloomed. I was simply enthralled to see my colleagues of decades. Hugh, Nathan, Dave, Art, Daryl , Julie, and so many more.
After Covid some still bumped knuckles in greeting but most shook hands and hugged. It was good to be home. I realized with the joy of joining how alone I’d felt,
My closest of friends of have ed in the last few years. My parents were gone, then my brother. And George I met in rehab. We’d go for dinner and a meeting once a month. Sharing, reminiscing. Never was their a finer friend. He called these our ‘soul food’ times because we had sole at the famed Chez Michel. He was like a brother to me and for decades we shared so much. I cry thinking of him and my brother. Then my friend John died. His son Luke has had a baby since. Called me and I’ve yet to visit. I loved his father. He;’d had a horseback jumping accident and become paraplegic like Supervamn. He once said to me as we were walking and wheeling, walking our dogs , “You know I think I’d rather be in this chair, than your head.”
John,my psychiatrist friend introduced me to his wife , “This is Bill, “ to some of us, ‘wild bill in purely affectionate way. “’
I was so thankful Dave was there. H’d survived his recent heart surgery. Saw him virtually in an office gown in recovery. Darryl was looking more stooped but I remember when we were all younger . Now we looked at the older men. We were all a little stooped. I complain about my back ache these days but I still stand mostly up right. Over dinner I shared that sex hurts because of the back pain. One colleague said he too is not having sex much because of the pain but another’s wife commented about their marriage, “I’m thankful we don’t have that problem.” She smileed at her husband who hardly blushed
“I lost Vivian to Covid last year. She was a grandmother , Medicine woman, decades sober, very active in AA. She became an Anglican priest. I loved to serve on the Aboriginal Urban Ministry with her. She worked with the street natives. We would have a banquet. I’d shoot bear and venison and give her lots of meat for these because I didn’t particularly like bear meat. But I gave her moose too so I was generous. I enjoyed the irony that the big native feasts east year were suppled by a white man. I miss her though. I don’t realize how much grief has taking ti’s toll in my life in recent years.”.
She was a beautiful young woman from Louisiana and I told her about my first psychiatrist mentor from the south, Hank Olivier. “We met in 97 at the meeting in Toronto’s. He feigned he needed help finding a Tilly hat. It was his sneaky way of getting me out of myself . I’d felt such shame and remorse coming to that meeting, celebrating’ We are not alone’. I’d been so stigmatized and isolated , bullied and truly rumbled. In a divorce and not working I’d thought I’d leave psychiatry and return to general practice, missing the collegiality I’d known in my year of surgical residency. Now here I was betrayed and lied to by the drunken drug abusing psychiatrists that I’d chosen to be among.
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I’ll never forget Graham saying to me in those days I contemplated suicide and thought I only had God. “Some people run with the cheetah’s and some people run with the Turkeys. You’ve surely been running with the turkeys.’ Those were the years before UBC became the shining light it has become today. I remember the head of psychiatry and my self talking about our quitting ringing in a meeting of AA. It was a big meeting in North Vancouver with lots of celebrities from the movies being made in Hollywood North. I remember saying to one fellow getting coffee with me, “You know you look a lot like…..”. “Yea, I get that a lot.’ I sat down with my friend Julie, who was on Baywatch with Pamela Anderson at the beginning of the show. Just sitting with Julie was special. She was the sexiest most head turning woman I’d ever known. My friend Bill from Fort Gary childhood whose sister was my brother’s friend used to sit with us and we’d make such a fun time of it.
Did you see the guy who looked like,….?” I asked Julie.
He doesn’t just look like….. He is him. I talked to him at the beginning of the meeting. WE were in a show together.
Just about the most greatest actor in Canada and Holly wood I’d say.
“He’s a real spokesman for recovery too,’ she said.
Now here I was with my other Julie friend. The gorgeous brilliant New York ballerina Julie. We’ve talked dance for years and visiting art galleries and d museums. I love New York and talked about my friend Laura. “She taking care of my dog at my home right now,”.
The halibut, burghers, salad made a fine meal. I drank lots of iced lemonade and iced tea. I was sharing with my plastic surgeon friend. I’m suspicious because they never seem to grow older looking handsome and lovely as the day met them , a cover girl and a cover boy. Meanwhile the rest of us seem to have a whole lot more wrinkles.
“One day I think I need a face lift and the next day I rather like the wrinkles.’
“I’ve made a living taking taking them away,’ he laughed.
The psychiatrist with us added “I’m not sure I’d want to lose mine since they’re the one thing I truly have earned myself,”.
I thought then of the years of sailing in trade winds and the open sea. The wrinkles I see in the mirror always remind me of that and I don’t want to forget the days outdoors.
Another rabbit hopped along the sidewalk as I returned to my room that night saying a series of good nights. I’d notice a whole lot of rabbits by the air port and thought it must be a cycle of proliferation. They come and go. I had talked some of hunting with a man who fished sharing that I’m not as keen to hunt as I once was, if only because the work of bringing in big game is so overwhelming. I’m thinking of fishing more remembering my father shifting that way in his 70’s and 80’s .
“I’d shared over dinner with John How I tried my big electro glide motorcycle I’d ridden to the meeting in Colorado on and another time at the Portland meeting, for a new smaller Nightster Special and how much more I enjoyed it. Like grouse hosting versus deer hunting. “I’m considering selling my 14 ton sailboat for a smaller one I could handle solo without such work and effort.”
“You ‘re getting ‘right sized” John said and laughed . We talk abot about ego especially egomania with inferiority complexes. . Yes I guess. I’ am , finally I’d said.
It was so good to see all the old friends and then to meet Ann the psychiatrist and Rick both decades sober in Rhode Island and the Carolinas but at their first IDAA meeting. We were reassuring a necomer. “I got into drugs and alcohol and lost everything. I was so down I was living on the streets and someone convinced me to go into treatment. I did and it’s been 9 years . Now friends have convinced me to return to work as a psychiatrist and I’m shadowing a colleague at the hospital and being facing review to have my licences fully restored. A lot has changed since I quit work for booze,’ he said. “I’m studying and being revived for my knowledge. I’d thrown myself i onto recovery after treatment and I’m pretty solid in that regards.
Ann had told him that ‘we re thought of as better than before for so many.’ Like broken bones that heal stronger.
“I was a program director for many years,’ Rick shared . “We were all so glad to have people who’d fallen and risen back up return. They ‘d shown real resilience and character and related so well with patients offering so much more than they had before.
Daryl laughed, “I was drinking a micky a day when I was head of the alcohol treatment program in our hoss;pitas. I certainly was a much better doctor when I got sober.
“I had a DUI and that’s what brought me to the attention of the authorities. I was glad for the monitoring. No one could doubt me after that and I’d found as anoyiong it was I found it helped.
I felt warm and cozy like a late night cookies and milk treat my mom sometimes gave me when I couldn’t sleep.
Last night I slept really well. No nightmares. I’d shared our gun stories with another psychiatrist. The patients pulling guns on us and demanding narcotics or bentos. I was thankful to laugh about us getting out of the situations. “I was supervising a resident watching through two way mirror when the patient pull;ed a gun on the resident who smoothly said he’d have to discuss this with his supervisor and stepped out to talk to me the patient following with the gun and now me the resident and patient with the gun all continuing the discussion. He said he’d had a few of those occasions working in forensics with the vets. “I was in charge of a group. They’d all killed and they were all packing and I admit it was pretty dicey at times but such a good feeling to watch them settle down after their years of deployment, the paranoid dissipate. I don’t think one had a gun on him when we had our last meeting together. ‘
The air is dry and fresh here. The sun has risen over the bare brown hill and the sky is a turguoise blue like the jewelry worn here. Since I’m up I’m going to make it to the early morning Attitude of Gratitude meeting I used to attend when Hal was alive. So many have died but I’ve known them and been touched to the very core by knowing them. Art was so proud. All my sons are in recovery now, he said. I remember his wife Carole and he at the Portland meeting having dinner with another psychiatrist and his wife sharing their concerns and anxiety about their children ‘s addictions and how they were handling it and their hopes they’d find their way out of the misery. Art’s son was taller than d his father, what people would call a ‘strapping young man’.
Standing in line for burgehers I said to Art, “you’re a good father’. “It’s been a long haul but we’re feeling a lot more hope these days and I’m thankful I’m still doing it.”
Art had been my mentor when I worked in the states. He was on the executive of the American Psychiatric Association at the time and I’d phone him late at night to discuss a difficult patient especially the ones with PTSD from the militartym. My said had been RCAF and Art was Air Force too. A decade older and truly an inspiration. I feel it in my heart seeing him. He’s stooped a bit now. He’s had surgery for his knees afte all that jumping out of planes and carrying heavy packs overwrought terrain. His wife had told him when the children were little, “You can either have me or the bottle .” “Best decision I ever made, said Art looking across at the beautiful blond whose stood by his side all these years.
It’s as Ptttsburgh and we’d all gone off to the Andry Warhol. Museum with Hank who’d been a flight surgeon in the Navy begore coming into recovery . We’d laughed at and with Art who couldn’t see the merit in a soup can painting. There was some big Pittsburgh game playing that night and we were talking football and Andy Warhol and Hank was asking me about the time I served in Churchill and was chasers by polar bears.
“We are not a glum lot,”. The banner statement shared one year. I’ve yet to know what this theme is this conference. I’ll earne today . I missed registration so didn’t have a name tag at the meriting. “I’m truly anonymous,” I quipped and an old timer I ‘ve known decades, said, “I”m sorry I’ve known you forever but I’ve forgotten your name. I’m having some troubles with my memory.” I was hearing him through the hearing aids I was still adjusting
“Bill” I said. Smiling. I’m here feeling sorry for myself thinking of all the friends I’ve lost and here’s my friend of decades, another psychiatrist colleague, aging gracefully and slowly losing his mind.
I still cry thinking of that first meeting in Toronto and the banner, “We are not alone,”. Hank and the search for a Tilly Hat and that feeling of coming home. Now here I am again
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