My father was a good man. Strong work ethic, good moral sense, decent, honest. In spite of being an alcoholic, he always provided for his family, as far as money was concerned. But he wasn't around as much as other dads were. I mean he was around physically, but he wasn't actually there. He'd come home from work, sweating and shaking, and start drinking within 30 seconds of getting in the house. There was a period of about 15 minutes of lucidity when I could talk to him, and then he's slide off into that fuzzy warm alcoholic haze he loved so much, and I couldn't talk to him any more. So I had quarter of an hour with my father each evening on work days, and he wasn't there at all on weekends. I must have been annoying to him, talking so fast and trying to say so much just when he was trying to enjoy those first two delicious glasses of scotch. But he never got mad or snapped at me. On the weekends he would down a 40-ouncer and then run dry on Sunday evening, and climb into the car to buy a pint wherever he could get it. On weekdays he generally finished off a 26-ouncer each night. The only time he wasn't drunk was in the morning before work, and during work. He'd get really nasty cold sweats, though. By the time he got home his hands were shaking badly. He was a good man, but he wasn't going to give up the booze for his wife, his children, his family, not for anybody. His blood pressure went so high, he started bleeding from the nose and had to go into the hospital several times. The doctors told him, you can't drink and take this blood pressure medication at the same time. So guess which one he chose? That's right. I found him dead in bed one afternoon. He had been sick, and he had decided to stop drinking cold turkey. He'd done it several times in the past, and was successful. The only trouble was, after he'd been sober for a week, he went right back to the booze. This time, his heart couldn't take the strain. I closed his eyelids with my fingertips and my mother and I called 911, and they took him away on a stretcher. That was the last I saw of him -- I didn't want to see his corpse in the coffin, so I didn't look at him in the funeral home. My dad. He taught me a lot, but the best thing he ever taught me was to never, never, ever be like him. And so I don't drink, at all, ever, and never will.