Greg was sober.
That’s the first thing Nathan told me. Before anything else. Like it was the most important thing.
“He’s sober, Mom,” he said. “He’s been sober for three years. Three years and four months. He has a chip. He showed me. He keeps it in the pocket of the jacket.”
Ezoic
Greg had gotten sober in 2022. At the VA. After he collapsed outside a homeless shelter and woke up in a hospital bed with tubes in his arms and a doctor telling him his liver was failing.
He went to rehab. He went to meetings. Every day. He got a room in a VA housing program. He got a part-time job at an auto parts store.
He was doing everything right.
And then, in May, he got a diagnosis.
Liver cancer. Advanced. From the hepatitis he’d picked up in the bad years, and the drinking before that.
