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1. congratulations my friend. I am so proud of you and your sobriety. While we have the same sober date you are many years ahead of me. This year I achieved five years sober. So I thought I would share a part of my story with you.

   As some of you know I have dementia. With that comes hallucinations. Some just visual some tactile and some auditory. Sometimes just one sometimes all three  This is part of my story with a visual and auditory hallucination. This is also part of my recovery process from grief. Something my psychiatrist recommended I write out.

   Getting sober five years ago. A haunting, or a Spiritual awakening. After the death of my wife nine years ago my alcoholism really took off. Today I’m sober but this is what happened to me leading up to the time I entered AA.

   There was a time in my life when something strange, quiet, and unexplainable began happening.

   Here is a letter to my wife. And my visitor.

   Dear Martha,

   I’ve tried for so long to find the words. For the silence you left behind. For the ache in my chest when you were gone. 

   For the mornings that felt too quiet to bear. For the nights when your memory was louder than sleep.

   Losing you broke something in me that I didn’t know could break. And I didn’t know how to carry it. So for a while… I didn’t.

   I turned to the bottle. Not because I didn’t love you—but because I couldn’t stand how much I did. 

   I drank to forget the sound of your laugh, the feel of your hand, the way life felt when you were still here.

   But even in my darkest moments, I was not truly alone. Here is the recurring hallucination I had for years.

   Each morning, for years after your death, I would wake to find a man—dressed in the clothes of another century—sitting calmly on my couch. He never spoke. He only nodded and smiled. 

   It wasn’t frightening. It felt… familiar. Gentle. Like a silent guardian or visitor from a place I couldn’t name. I never knew who he was, but I grew used to him—like morning light or breath itself.

   Sir,

   Though I never knew your name, I’ve known your presence.

   You appeared in the quiet moments of my mornings, You never spoke, but your silence said more than words ever could. You smiled. You nodded. And I felt something I couldn’t explain—something familiar, something calm.

   I would offer you a cup of coffee each time, the way one does with a guest—though in truth, you never felt like a guest. You felt like family. When I turned to prepare the cup and looked back, you were always gone. But somehow, it never felt like a loss. It felt like a ritual, a rhythm. A silent visitation.

   For years, I never questioned who you were. I only knew that your presence brought peace. It wasn’t until I shared this with my daughter—until she unearthed a photograph from our past—that your face finally had a name, a place, a story that stretched back through blood and time. You were my great-great-grandfather. And somehow, without ever having met you, I had known you all along.

   How does a soul recognize another it’s never seen? How does memory echo forward through generations and arrive as a man on a couch?

   I don’t pretend to know. I only know that it was real.

   You came not to teach, not to haunt, not to intervene—but simply to be with me. To bear witness. To nod in silent understanding. And I can’t help but believe that in some unseen way, you were saying, “I’m here. I’ve seen your road. I walk with you still.”

   If you came in the days when I needed quiet strength, thank you. If you came to remind me that I come from resilience, from presence, from men who endure—thank you. If you came simply because you could—because love, even across time, finds a way—then thank you most of all.

   Your visits stopped, but the memory remains—strong, vivid, unshakable. A mystery, yes. But also a gift.

   You sat on my couch, but now you sit deeper still—in my story, in my blood, in the space between silence and remembrance.

   Thank you for the nod. Thank you for the smile. Thank you for showing me that we are never truly alone.

   Then something else happened.

   One Sunday, I sat quietly in church. Searching for something I couldn’t name. The preacher’s voice was steady, but suddenly, everything around me darkened—like the lights dimming in a theater before something sacred or terrifying begins.

   And then I saw it.

   A giant skull appeared—floating in the darkness. And from its mouth, a colorful snake emerged. It slithered through the mouth, into an eye socket, and out the other. It was twisting and writhing, biting itself, moving with an intensity I can’t describe.

   I was frozen in fear. For a moment, I thought I was losing my mind. I wanted to run, or cry out, or disappear. 

   I don’t know exactly what the skull meant, or the serpent. Maybe it was death. Maybe it was my old self. Maybe it was pain, or ego, or fear, biting itself to death in front of me.

   Then  that beautiful  voice from my wife said 

   I’ve been with you—more than you know.

   Not in the way we both once longed for, not in touch or sound or warm breath beside you in the night—but in the quiet. 

   In the stillness between your thoughts. In the ache behind your ribs. In the love that never died.

   I saw the way grief hollowed you out. I saw the way you folded your pain into silence, into sorrow, into bottles and long nights and mornings you didn’t want to face. I never judged you.

   I knew it was love that broke you. And I also knew it would be love that brought you back.

   So I waited. Not with impatience—but with faith.

   I watched the man come to sit with you. I knew him too—your blood, your ancestor, your protector. He was sent because I couldn’t reach you in the ways I used to.

    But he could sit. He could nod. He could remind you, in silence, that you are never alone.

   And I saw what came after—the skull, the snake, the terror. I know that was the moment you faced it all. Not just my death, but your pain, your shame, your doubt, your edge.

   But oh, how proud I was when you stood in that darkness… and didn’t run. You let it wash over you. And when the fear was gone, peace came in—like a tide returning to shore.

   That was the moment you were reborn. Not to forget me. But to live with me—in a new way.

   I’m in your laughter now. In your quiet mornings. In the way you carry yourself with softness instead of weight. 

   I’m in the way you help others, the way you listen, the way you look at life not as something to survive—but something to be grateful for.

   You don’t have to be haunted anymore. You don’t owe me guilt. You’ve already given me the greatest gift: you kept going.

   And I want you to keep going still.

   Smile more. Forgive more. Take the long drives. Make peace with the silence.

   I’ll be there—in every step, every breath, every kind thing you do.

   Not gone. Just changed.

   Still yours. Still proud. Still love.

   Forever, Martha

   Somewhere in that moment,

   Peace emerged.. A calmness so deep, so complete, I didn’t know a person could feel it and still be alive.

   That peace has never left me.

   And since that day, I’ve had no more visions. No more ghosts or visitors. Only this sense that something inside me died that day—and something else was born.

   I was changed.

   I was freed. I was no.longer a slave to the bottle.

   And I was not alone.

   Whether it was spiritual, ancestral, or the work of a God I’m still learning how to understand, I don’t need to explain it anymore. I just need to honor it.

   So today, I live with quiet gratitude. For the man who visited me. For the snake that terrified me. For the peace that stays with me.

   And for the truth that sometimes, the soul sees things the eyes never will—and that’s where healing begins.

   It’s been five years since I got sober and even now, I have that sence of peace I found that day and I am full of gratitude for those visions that drove me to get sober. I’m Tom and I’m an alcoholic.

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