Proof of Heaven

out all around us. I put the car in gear, squinted carefully into the
rearview mirror, and pulled back onto the road.
In an instant, my view of myself had been totally changed. After that
phone call I was, of course, still everything I’d been before: still a
scientist, still a doctor, still a father, still a husband. But I also felt, for
the first time ever, like an orphan. Someone who had been given away.
Someone less than fully, 100 percent wanted.
I had never, before that phone call, really thought of myself that way
—as someone cut off from my source. I’d never defined myself in the
context of something I had lost and could never regain. But suddenly it
was the only thing about myself I could see.
Over the next few months an ocean of sadness opened up within me: a
sadness that threatened to swamp, and sink, everything in my life I’d
worked so hard to create up to that point.
This was only made worse by my inability to get to the bottom of what
was causing the situation. I’d run into problems in myself before—
shortcomings, as I’d seen them—and I’d corrected them. In med school
and in my early days as a surgeon, for example, I’d been part of a culture
where heavy drinking, under the right circumstances, was smiled upon.
But in 1991 I began to notice that I was looking forward to my day off,
and the drinks that went along with it, just a little too eagerly. I decided
that it was time for me to stop drinking alcohol altogether. This was not
easy by any stretch—I’d come to rely on the release provided by those off
hours more than I’d known—and I only made it through those early days
of sobriety with my family’s support. So here was another problem,
clearly with only me to blame for it. I had help to deal with it if I chose to
ask. Why couldn’t I nip it in the bud? It just didn’t seem right that a piece
of knowledge about my past—a piece I had no control over whatsoever—
should be able to so completely derail me both emotionally and
professionally.
So I struggled. And I watched in disbelief as my roles as doctor,
father, and husband became ever more difficult to fulfill. Seeing that I
was not my best self, Holley set us up for a course of couples counseling.
Though she only partially understood what was causing it, she forgave me