Congratulations to you from another recovering alcoholic.
It’s never easy but it’s usually worth it all in the long run.
good job
I completely get what you’re saying, and I think it’s super-cool that you “pass them on”. It’s just, from my own perspective, AA was such an integral part of who/what my father was for so many years that those chips seem important to us! (BTW, we buried his 24 hour chip and his most recent one with the part of his ashes that we put next to where my Mom is buried.
Here’s a story about my father and sobriety: when my Mom was terminally ill, one of my sisters kept insisting that after Mom died, Daddy would go back to drinking. I said “No, absolutely not! Too many times I’ve heard him say ‘Nothing is so bad that a drink won’t make it worse’ and ‘My worst day sober is still better than my best day drunk’. He will not drink again.”
Well, the day she died (in our living room), Daddy called me into the kitchen. He pointed to the bottle of whiskey my husband and I kept on the bottom of the microwave cart; we’d had that bottle for some time at that point, and it was mostly empty. Anyway, Daddy pointed to it and said “Is that all the whiskey you got, pal?”
I can’t begin to tell you the multitude of things that went through my mind in those few seconds, but there was nothing to do but tell him the truth. “Yes, sir, that’s all we’ve got right now”. At which point, he takes out his wallet and peels a $20.00 off the top and says “Well, you’d better send your husband down the liquor store; there’s some people coming who might need a drink!”
He lived for another 17 years, all of them sober. But I’ll tell you what, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather right after that conversation!