Pops&Me
My dad—Pops—was in alcohol rehab. He’d been there for eight weeks, down in southern Georgia. I would be his first visitor, and I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect, mainly because I could hardly remember ever seeing my dad sober. On the flight down and then the drive from the airport, my anxiety only grew. I hadn’t spoken to him since he’d been admitted. No one had. I’d written him a couple letters, mostly keeping things light. Of course, Pops and I very rarely held conversations that were anything but surface. We didn’t talk much at all. What would I say to him now?
We’d done the intervention on a Sunday morning at my brother Ryan’s house in Columbia, South Carolina. It was Mom, Ryan, our cousin Kevin and the therapist we’d worked with.
She had told Mom to have Pops’s bag all packed and ready to go. Ryan had offered some pretext on why my dad needed to come over—to help fix a door. Pops prided himself on being handy, even when he was loaded. Ryan went
