Conversations With the Dead: 11/19/79 Houston, Texas

Dear Teresa,

Sorry I've waited to write, but we have really been busy around here the last few days. Several sick people came in, etc. But I was so glad to get your letter, and the picture is beautiful! I wish for my birthday I could get one enlarged. (To fit that 5 x 7 frame I have your other ones in). It's really a good picture of you. Everyone here made over it. (We have nine women here now, including Pat, the manager).

Thank goodness you have a teacher you like for algebra! (ha).

Well, they've made me assistant manager here, which means I help Pat out running things, and I'm in charge on her two days off. This helps me, to be able to help other people, and even when I go to work I can still do it. But I haven't really made up my mind if I'll go to work, or go to school. It's possible that I could go to school through the VA, and they pay you to go. But we'll see. I'm just leaving it to God, to point me in the right direction. I don't want anything except what HE wants anymore. It's really helped me to be here. The director of the house (Toni) is a real good Christian woman. She was a drug addict and alcoholic for seventeen years and she really knows what she's doing. She's been straight now for six years.

I'll always care for Phil, but we can't stay together. I want to be his friend, and always will if he's willing. But my sobriety has to come first. That's the only way I can make it. I'm not good for anyone, until I get myself straight, and the only way I can do that is to put God, and the AA program first. I hope you understand. God knows how much I love you, and Charlotte and David, and I pray for all of you every day. I know I'm not much help to you, but I do know HE will take care of you, and guide you. And I'm so grateful for that. I miss seeing you all so much, but I just have to wait, and see how things work out. And it will, I have no doubts, because I know I'm where I'm supposed to be, doing what HE wants. It may take a little time, but I didn't get this way overnight, and I won't get things right overnight.

Well, sweetie, I have to go now. We are going to have a meeting. Be sweet and please write me. Tell Charlotte to send me some pictures or else! I love you, very much.

Love,
(Mudder!) Rogene (<-- The girls were distracting me!)

You leave so much in God's hands. Could this have been the problem? Looking outside yourself? You once joked that, "The Devil made me do it." So the Devil was your left half and God was your right. Where were you? Again, it just makes me so angry that you invested all your faith in a fairy tale, spent your life letting a cartoon character drive. I wish I could have been there as an adult to warn you, but then I wonder if you would have listened, and if without your fairy tale you would have been worse off, more alone. I can't know.