Jim Klobuchar — A Man Confides His Pain

A Man Confides His Pain to His Best Friends

by Jim Klobuchar

For as long as they had known him he met all of the markers of the gregarious man. Despite his more than 70 years he was robust and strong physically, a man who had achieved professionally. He was also a marvelous story teller with a gift for self-deflation and good will. These seemed instinctive and made him popular alike with long time friends or just about anyone who happened to walk into his life.

He acknowledged that there was another part to his personality in an earlier life, when he could be charitably described as arrogant and recklessly self-involved. 

But that was years ago. His life now, apart from the usual trials of getting old, had brought him contentment, the love and counsel of his wife, an acceptance of himself and what his friends saw as the gifts that flowed from his decision years ago to give up drinking.
These people, relatively older, meet regularly to renew their commitment to sobriety and to share the events of their week or month. The talk can be thoughtful and sometimes intimate but it’s usually nothing too ponderous and can get hilarious. But it’s generally a lot of expressed gratitude for the relative peace that has entered their lives. 

Fundamentally, this comes down to the truth, hard and undeniable, about their earlier lives. Facing that truth and acting on it has not necessarily brought them to some gleaming grail of bliss. But it has restored them to the part of humanity they lost through their self-indulgence. Gathering each week is their recognition of a shared resolve to keep that commitment in the forefront of their lives because doing it alone—for them—is an invitation to losing it and all of the horror that follows. 

Not long ago the man who had re-discovered himself and acquired these friends, and is usually at the center of the free-wheeling banter, asked permission to speak on a personal matter. He said he would have to leave early to be at his wife’s side. She had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. He couldn’t know how much time she had left, but he needed to be with her this morning. He had a request. This was a strong and self-sufficient man unapologetically expressing a desperate need, a man who had been an amateur boxer and who had dealt with contention and crisis all of his professional life. He was now in tears of grief. His anguish was profound. “I’d like your support,” he said, “I need you.” 

They gathered around him and embraced him, each in turn. There was almost no talk. And when it was over, one in the group drove him to the hospital. 

What happened in the next hour of their gathering expressed the unbreakable bond that had grown among these imperfect men and women, recognizing once more that it was in the admission of their weakness that they had gained strength. They saw it simply and truthfully in the tears of a strong man asking for their help and embrace.

People who have grappled successfully with the ogre of addiction, and have lived beyond it to renew their gratitude for this freedom, often express the lessons of the struggle in axioms that seem to make sense. None more than this: “We’re only as sick as the secrets we keep.” 

There are no more secrets for this man. There was an outpouring of love and kinship, a willingness to walk together with him and shelter him when the road is at its most difficult, but the mind and heart are clear.

It is the human condition at its best.