My life’s been punctuated by awards. Three of my books, on local history, have won national recognition. For thirty years, I taught literature and history at Mission Prep in San Luis Obispo and at my Alma Mater, Arroyo Grande High School. I was a Lucia Mar Teacher of the Year. I’ve had three babies named for me.  They are far more meaningful awards.

I have the devotion of thousands of students, some now in their fifties, who somehow still love me—I just don’t understand this— every bit as much as I have always loved them. At least nine of them teach history. Two of them are specialists, university professors, in areas dear to me, military history and the history of farm labor.

And I am an alcoholic. I am, as a writer, very open about that.

That’s why I’m devastated right now. My primary care doctor, Scott Davis, died unexpectedly yesterday. He was caring, funny, extremely bright and he actually listened to you.

He was also relentless in badgering me—somehow he did this gently—about my drinking. I mean no disrespect, and I have no proof, but I somehow had a hunch that he’d had demons, too—like all of us—at points in his life. That made him both my hero as well as my doctor. He was, to borrow the wonderful Yiddish word, a mensch.

I made two appointments with him earlier in the year and broke both of them because I hadn’t stopped drinking, was ashamed, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. That’s how much he meant to me.

I had an appointment with him in October, and I didn’t want to let him down again. That’s why I’m getting help now and that’s why I’ve been sober for ten days. This was for Scott.

I wanted so much to come into his office and hear him say, as he had a few years back when I managed a brief burst of sobriety, how healthy and alive I looked. I wanted to hear him say that in October.

I won’t get the chance to hear him again. I do have the chance to honor him by staying sober.

A doctor named Dykes Johnson delivered me. He was a private pilot at an air meet in Shafter and got the call, from Taft, that my Mom had gone into labor a month before I was due. Dykes had a hunch and flew back to Taft. I was both premature, at four pounds, and the umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around my deck. I was being strangled. Dykes arrived, intense and worried, burst through the delivery room doors, roughly shoving my Dad aside, and saved my life.

How blessed I am, at seventy-one, to have known the best doctor of my adult life in Scott. He saved my life, too.

I will not let this good doctor down again. I will never forget him, either.