Moonlight on the gravestones

We check ourselves out at the nurses station and arrive at the meeting early. I am setting up coffee cups and chatting to a slightly portly fellow, youngish, in a white polo shirt with strawberry blonde short hair, glasses and boat shoes. He tells me that he followed the program to the letter and that’s why he recovered. I say “that’s great.”

I was really motivated. I had a lot to lose. I was hardcore. Might not look it though. He doesn’t.

Later he shares. Its his first birthday. He was a cocaine, alcohol, sex and gambling addict. He gets down on his knees during part of his share to show how he speaks with his higher power.

We speak later as I wash mugs.

How bad was it?

I was putting 50K in the pokies every night, snorting 3 grams of coke, drinking a liter of whisky and f*cking chicks in the disabled toilets. It was pretty bad. I was thrown out of the house so I crawled under the house and passed out. My wife took out an AVO and now I see my kids for 3 hours a fortnight. But this is a place of miracles. If I can get better anyone can get better. You just have to do the work and get down on your knees and pray.

Bill, Craig, Dylan and I leave to head back to the hospital. We decide to detour through the beautiful ancient graveyard, overgrown with moss and reeds. The susurrus and light reflections of the moon on the tombstones is almost an experience of mindfulness. It is one f the oldest graveyards in Australia, verdant, wild, crumbling and peaceful at the same time. We come to Mary McKillop’s grave and there is a statue of her.

Put your hand in her hand and feel the energy.

I do, and it is powerful and beautiful. If the sky was clear I would have laid down in the grass and watched the stars.

But it is not. It starts to rain and then pelt down warm heavy drops as we try to find our way out of the graveyard and back to the hospital. We are getting lost and using phone torches looking aimlessly for a gate but the mood is free and light, like we have all left something behind there. As we get back to the street and run across the road in the pouring rain Dylan starts laughing.

Four adults, of all different ages, lost in a graveyard and taking a stroll in the pouring rain. We look like a bunch of drunks.

Like maybe we all met at the bus stop and shared a cask of goon.

I am laughing to. In that moment I feel present and enjoy the lightness of being.