Impact at Acapulco

AA Grapevine® - Our Meeting in Print Online Volume 26 Issue 10 March 1970
TWO DAYS alone in Acapulco had been fairly successful. I had sold a couple of small paintings, had had some sun and swimming, and was eager to get home to my Mexican wife and our nine-year-old daughter. It was just dark, and I hoped to be home in an hour. I rounded a curve, going about fifty-five. Suddenly, a huge bull stepped into the road less than 100 yards away. Gripping the wheel and braking hard, I braced myself for the impact and dove into darkness. . . .

I learned later that several cars stopped, but the drivers thought I was dead and drove on. The 1.000-pound bull was killed and thrown thirty feet. Without a seat belt, I had a fracture of the fourth lumbar vertebra and cuts and contusions on the head from broken glass.

I've now had seven weeks to think about the accident, and to learn to accept it. (There was no guilt or feeling of inadequacy involved, since anyone can get clobbered hitting a cow around any curve in Mexican mountain driving.) In the first couple of weeks, as I stared at the wall or the ceiling, the Serenity Prayer was of great help. I did not indulge in such hindsight as "If I had not stopped for a hamburger, I wouldn't have hit the bull." No, just as I had accepted and learned to live with hepatitis seven years before, when I was in bed for two and a half months. I lay quietly and took this.

Actually, the hepatitis had been harder to take. I'd been sober ten years, and it seemed hardly fair for my liver to give out and almost kill me now. Of course, I had almost died twice of cirrhosis when drinking, so my liver had had a bit of mileage on it.

This time, friends were wonderful. An AA phoned from Mexico City offering money if I needed it, and a man I'd sponsored a year before drove my wife to the scene of the accident and helped with the insurance adjuster. On the But for the grace of God side, a Mexican alcoholic with six small children was in the hospital with me. He was not there for drinking; both legs had been amputated because of a circulatory ailment. (An old friend who helped start the Cuernavaca AA Group with me eleven years ago is trying to get a wheelchair for him.) Also in the hospital. I met a French missionary priest, who was delighted when I told him of AA and that a Spanish-speaking group was available. He had been one of that group of worker-priests in Paris who were widely known about ten years ago for helping drunks and derelicts.

A couple of weeks later, the padre came to visit me in my home. He brought two Mexican alcoholics looking for help, and then occurred one of those miraculous "coincidences" we learn to expect in AA. I decided to call Eddy, the Mexican-American who was keeping the Spanish meetings going, and just as I was dialing his number, Eddy himself walked into my bedroom with his wife. Then and there we had an informal AA meeting for the prospective members.

At the hospital, acceptance had been made easier for me by the example of a Carmelite nun, who radiated health and joy in life and service. We had good talks, even though I communicated in splintered Spanish. She showed me again that when one has a sense of dedication and vocation, life is given an extra dimension. Her serenity and goodness made this Presbyterian minister's son thank God that he was an artist who had come through the valley of the shadow of death and alcoholism, and now was not only doing what he had always wanted to do with his life, but was able to pass along a message of life and freedom to the still-suffering alcoholic.

I've had to learn a lot about acceptance in many areas. Two other men and I started AA in Cuernavaca in May 1958. I've worn the hair shirt of trying to keep it alive for more than eleven years, and have had to learn to live with neglect and misunderstanding and with my own misery at seeing alcoholics die in this international resort center, because they wanted no part of our life-giving program.

My Mexican experience has been wonderfully ego-deflating, changing me from a New York AA hotshot and popular speaker to a Mexican peon in the vineyards of the Higher Power. The record of my sponsorship is often depressing, but it is lightened a little because one of my pigeons did start the Spanish-speaking groups in Mexico City, and there are now about sixty. My personal life has been increasingly good, however. My oils, watercolors, prints, and sculpture are now in many museums and university collections.

Out of my hopeless alcoholism, with acceptance of my continuing limitations, has come the gift of the life I've always wanted. The fractured spine is very temporary, but the blessing of this Fellowship goes on and on, with, for me, special emphasis on the First, Third, Eleventh, and Twelfth Steps.

Zorba the Greek put it very well: "When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage. An invisible and all-powerful enemy. . .seems to rush upon us to destroy us; but we are not destroyed.

"Each time that within ourselves we are the conquerors, although externally utterly defeated, we human beings face an indescribable pride and joy. Outward calamity is transformed into a supreme and unbreakable felicity."

W. C.
Cuernavaca