The House an Alcoholic Built

By Bree Tarir

Why is it so difficult to escape our demons? To rise above the burdens of our past?

After returning home from the European Theater in World War II, a young man never speaks of the horrors he witnessed in Europe. He marries and has three children but turns to alcohol to cope with PTSD. When the pressure of a family becomes too great he abandons his young wife and three children in the oil fields of the Canadian north and disappears from their lives. Alone, with only a strong will to cope, the mother does her best, but it is never enough. Desperate to save her family she makes a decision that will ultimately tear them apart. For her three young children, a hard life became one of misery.

They had no nurturing, caring environment; no role models or examples of how to handle stress and adverse situations. In a life with little promise it was inevitable it would leave its mark and that at least one would succumb to the ravages of alcoholism, like his father.

The House an Alcoholic Built is the story of three children struggling through life and the consequences handed to them by the past. This tale is a reflection of a disease that haunts far too many around the world and, ultimately, it is a journey through despair to find that we do have a choice in how we deal with adversity when life has little promise of a happy ending.

What Others Say:
"... Once I started to read this book, I could not put it down. For anybody who has had to deal with the behavior of a family member on their way to becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict – or is already there - the symptoms of the illness will be recognized; the consequences will be predictable." Al Rennie

"... Wow ... what an incredible story of the triumph of the human spirit.” Craig Stephen Copland - author of New Sherlock Holmes Mysteries

"...a story that needed to be told. I think it could be a tool for some who are looking for answers to their own past and present family situations." Charlie Reb

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bree Tarir
• Release date: Aug 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9780973622416

Book preview

The House an Alcoholic Built

Bree Tarir

Copyright 2021 by Bree Tarir

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Conclusion

Happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are, it solely relies on what you think.

Quote by Buddha

DEDICATION

For my brother, who was so much more than an alcoholic

Introduction

This is the story of my brother Brandon and his journey into alcoholism. But, since no one exists in isolation, Brandon did not make his journey alone - his family struggled along that path with him. So this is also the story of his, and my, family.

Some would say that the outcome for my brother was inevitable… after all, our father was an alcoholic. But, if that is the case, then why am I not an alcoholic as well, or our other brother?

According to The American Addictions Centers alcohol use disorder, the medical term for alcoholism has been linked to some specific genes. This cautious statement suggests that since our father was an alcoholic we, as his children who inherited his genes, could struggle with the same addiction. However, in a 2008 study conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) it was concluded that overall, genes account for only 40 to 60 percent of a person's risk of alcoholism. When it comes to male children, however, the risk can rise to as high as ninety percent.

So other factors come into play with alcohol addiction. They include a person's environment, being less aware of warning signs indicating they should slow down or stop drinking, or even abnormal levels of serotonin, the mood-regulating neurotransmitter associated with depression.

I recall times when Brandon flushed a bright red from just a few sips of alcohol.

We also should consider that my brother did NOT inherit a genetic tendency toward alcoholic abuse since the cause of my father’s alcoholism may have been as the result of his experiences in World War II. Many of the men who fought in that horrific conflict came back with what we now identify as PTSD. In the 1940s, this stress disorder was not recognized or treated, so often returning servicemen self-medicated with alcohol.

When the family realized the path Brandon was on we suggested, and then offered Brandon help. He brushed it off with a laugh. Why brush it off in such a cavalier manner? Birth order perhaps? Much has been made of the theory that the order in which we are born in a family determines some of our traits. Brandon was the third and last child in our family. The baby of a family is said to be highly social, confident, creative, as well as adept at getting others to do things for them. The first three are bang on. Perhaps he thought he could control his drinking if he had to, and I'm sure he would have enjoyed the socializing that comes with heavy drinking, but I wouldn't agree with his being adept at getting others to do things for him. In fact, it seemed that my other brother, Kevin, and I could easily get Brandon to do things for us rather than the other way around. And, by the time Brandon asked for my help, he well and truly needed my help.

Since the law of cause and effect states that every cause or action has a specific and predictable effect, perhaps any of the possible causes mentioned above resulted in his addiction. However, as a species, we have also been blessed with free will and intelligence. Brandon was very intelligent so later in life he must have realized that his choices were leading him down a hard path, the same path in fact as he had witnessed in his father. It's a mystery to me why he would choose to ignore the signs and reject the help that was offered.

Although we can speculate, we can never really know how, or why, my brother who was bright, energetic, charming, funny, and talented became an alcoholic. Why didn’t he take a different view on life when he realized how destructive his lifestyle was? I wish I had pressed him for more specifics as to why he wouldn’t – or couldn’t - stop drinking.

Following is our story as best I can recall it, and in some places, as it was retold to me by family members. Unfortunately, we all see things through a different lens so I apologize in advance to those who would disagree with my recollections.

Chapter One

I realized while reading Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle that in many ways she could have been writing about our family’s life. The location is different, of course, since we grew up in the oil fields of Alberta and then later in British Columbia during the 1950s and 1960s, but the shattered childhoods and problems in later life are similar.

My parents met in New Westminster, British Columbia, in the late 1940s. Dad was born on the family farm in the French community of Albertville in the Emilebury District of Saskatchewan. When he met my mother he was recently home from a war of which he never spoke.

From a search of his war records we know he served in the army for three years as a rifleman with The Black Watch Regiment; a contingent that played a major role in the raid on Dieppe, France in 1942.

His first language was French, so he would have been a valuable member of his unit. The Black Watch went on to participate in over thirty battles in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. What horrors did this young farm boy witness? It is highly unlikely that he had ever travelled outside of Saskatchewan prior to enlisting. Now he found himself sailing out of Halifax for England with further training at Aldershot, England. When he returned home after the war was over he arrived with a souvenir - a pair of bright yellow wooden shoes. Dad later received a lovely valentine from a woman in the Netherlands which he kept. A sweetheart, perhaps. After the war, he returned to the farm but soon grew restless. How could he not? He had seen and experienced far more than the average citizen in his small community. Too restless to stay, he moved west, to British Columbia.

Mom was also born on the family farm in the French community of Pascal, Saskatchewan. Her father was an ambitious risk-taker with a proclivity for living on the wild side in both his many boom-to-bust business enterprises as well as his chaotic domestic life. Mom seems to have inherited a lot of her father’s traits. She was an extremely pretty, lively woman, always open to adventure. Her years of convent education in Saskatchewan over, she was invited by an aunt to move with her to New Westminster, British Columbia to assist in a hairdressing business.

Mom was young and free, the war was over, and it was time to enjoy life. How wonderful it would have seemed to meet a handsome party boy who enjoyed singing. Since they were both French and born and raised in Saskatchewan, they would have had a lot in common as they started their courtship.

Mothers will tell their daughters that they should look for qualities like integrity, honesty, or kindness in the man they want to marry. At the very least a woman should marry the kind of man with whom she would want to raise her children. Tell that to a newly liberated young woman just turning twenty! We will never know for sure why they married but a good clue lies in the fact that I was born several weeks shy of a full nine months. In the late 1940s having a child without the benefit of marriage, especially from a Catholic background, was a huge no-no. The wedding pictures show a happy couple celebrating with family and friends. There is no hint of the hardships ahead. But, as with most individuals, Mom and Dad entered their relationship lugging the baggage of their previous experiences with them, and sometimes the weight of that load is too much for even two people in love to carry well. Given their personalities and Dad’s burden of experiences from the war, their match may have been doomed from the start.

From looking at the old black and white photos in family albums it appears that the quick addition of a baby girl to the family resulted in a settled start to their married life. Mom and Dad proudly pose on the steps of their tidy rented bungalow holding their newborn daughter. Plantings of shrubs and flowers front the home and spill onto a neatly mowed lawn. Life is good, the photo seems to say.

Then there was another baby, my brother Kevin. It should have been the perfect family but Dad once more grew restless. His wages at the lumber mill were stretched to the limit to support the four of us, as well as cover the rental payments on the house. Word came, perhaps through a letter from a brother who was working in the oil fields, that the oil patch in Alberta paid top dollar to hard-working men who didn’t mind getting their hands dirty. Farmers and ex-soldiers fit the bill perfectly. Dad heeded the call of the good money to be made and set plans in motion to purchase a homemade 7 foot by 27-foot house trailer. The family’s gypsy years began.

The hard-living lifestyle associated with the oil patch industry wouldn’t have been a drawback for Dad. The work hard – play hard