The Tribulations

“Look at all my trials and tribulations, sinking in a gentle pool of wine…Don’t disturb me now, I can see the answers, till this evening is this morning, life is fine”. So sang the inept Apostles in Rice and Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar”.  I got that album in the seventh grade. I listened to it non-stop. It became my habit to this day of listening to it straight-through on Good Friday afternoon. The lenten season builds up to the crescendo of Good Friday when all goes quiet because the Spirit of Wisdom and Love has been murdered on a cross by the Jews and Romans for being a political zealot. The Apostles ran and hid, realizing that the tribulations of the previous evening they put on hold with wine had now become clear. And the men were self-damning in their failure to stand up and support their Teacher as he faced arrest, judgment, ridicule and death. They couldn’t have known these events would occur to the level of intensity they did. So, what could their previous evening’s tribulations have been?

I submit they may have been similar to those shared at one time or another by all humans: fear, self-doubt, second-guessing, procrastination. Am I a good enough person that I’d stand between another and extreme adversity?  Theoretically, yes; realistically, I don’t know. I don’t really have the experience of being time-tested and truthed with a human.

With my beloved and deeply loved dog, Marco the 33 pound Standard Schnauzer, I did come between him and two free-running Rottweilers intent on killing him because they could. I grabbed a stick and ran between Marco and the two 150 pound Rotties. I saved my Marco’s life.

Mine was a consuming worry of losing Marco to death; a tribulation certainly. And when death expectedly wrested him from me, my world collapsed. But in the aftermath of our painful separation, I was a recipient of new gifts in faith, spirituality, empathy and leadership.

And strength, embodied in a vow to Marco before he left, that I would not seek out the comfort of alcohol to numb the chilling pain and gnawing loss of our separation. I wouldn’t have his passing also be the date of my slipping and having to give up every one of those hard earned AA chips.  I wouldn’t let this tribulation writ large “sink in a gentle pool of wine” (or vodka or rum).

Ten years later, it’s still a tribulation for me to have loved so deeply and lost so crucially. But I never have numbed it with alcohol. Instead, sobriety is a tribute to my boy.