I don’t remember the first time I heard or read the Serenity Prayer, but I do remember it struck me as both beautiful and wise. I didn’t memorize its words, but I identified with its contents. Then my husband Marlo and I were slammed by our son Matt’s telling us he was an alcoholic.
The Serenity Prayer embedded itself in my core as I recited it weekly at Al-Anon meetings with other relatives of alcoholics: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Weekly for several years, I heard fellow Al-Anon members describe through tears the stories of their inability to change their addicted loved ones and their journeys toward acceptance. I cried too as I told stories of Matt’s driving while drunk, his failed attempts at sobriety on his own, and his relapses after release from treatment programs.
I also found truth in an anonymous revision of that prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know that it’s me. Perhaps the anonymous author of that revision intended it as wit, but for me it became sanity-saving truth. My behavior was the only behavior I could change, not Matt’s.
Not ever since his birth. But especially not after he became addicted to alcohol. I also learned a broader lesson.
Blurred boundaries damaged my other relationships as well. I saw my ache to control those I loved. I prayed the Serenity Prayer for those relationships as well.
Al-Anon stories, along with treatment center training and my therapist, told me often I could not rescue him. Intermittently and with great pain, I learned the wisdom to tell the difference between the things I could change and the things I could not. Although we made mistakes, Marlo and I found the courage to set our personal boundaries.
We set our standard for life in our home: sobriety. To live with us, Matt needed to abide by the house standard. Eventually, he failed to meet that standard.
He moved out. A year or so later came a shattering phone call from a Des Moines coroner. Just two hours earlier, on July 16, 2017, 4:15 p.
m., Matthew Van Klompenburg, age 33, had died while sitting on his front steps. A next-door neighbor saw him slump over and attempted CPR without success.
A subsequent dose of NARCAN® by police also failed to revive Matt. Unknown to us, Matt’s addiction had recently expanded to drugs. Cause of death: a combination of heroin, prescription drugs, and alcohol.
We went numb, then wept. We buried him and wept some more. I prayed the Serenity Prayer.
Over. And over. One group of friends gave Marlo and me a memorial garden stone with the words of that prayer.
We placed it in our flowerbeds. Did those friends know its significance in Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon meetings? During the early days of loss, it was too painful to ask. And then I decided the moment to ask had passed.
I have never inquired. I do not know. I do know the memorial stone comforted me often as I gardened.
It reminded me friends grieved with us. It reminded me of the hard truths I had learned in Al-Anon and therapy, truths I still needed to relearn from time to time. Somewhere in that blur of early grief, I bought another Serenity Prayer memento.
I no longer remember where. I only remember I stumbled upon it used, either online or at a thrift store. It had already comforted some anonymous owner.
When new, it had been made from an upcycled book. This new-to-me memento with the Serenity Prayer could comfort me indoors, in addition to the reminder in my gardens. Years passed.
The garden stone cracked in two. Over the blur of years, neither Marlo nor I remember which of us stepped on it and broke it. I took a picture of the broken stone, and we parted with it.
It had done its work. It was no longer an essential part of our comfort. The memorial book, however, still sits in my office as a reminder of the son I loved, still love, and still grieve from time to time.
I will never forget him. The words on the memorial book remind me of the need for boundaries with my loved ones still on earth. I hope I never forget that either.
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