My father drank. He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food- compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling. I use the past tense not because he ever quit drinking but because he quit living. That is how the story ends for my father, age sixty-four, heart bursting, body cooling and forsaken on the linoleum of my brother’s trailer. The story continues for my brother, my sister, my mother, and me, and will continue so long as memory holds.
found in The Art of the Personal Essay p734
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