October 1979.  An article appeared for the first time called “Death of a Sponsor” and it has since been published many times all over the world.  The article was Travers' obituary for his Sponsor Sackville (source: Twenty Years of Bristol Fashion tape archive).

“Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;

For death he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.”

A few weeks ago my sponsor died.  He was in his 80s, and he had been sober in the Fellowship 32 years.  I feel writing some kind of an appreciation of him will help me and maybe some who read it, particularly those who shared him with me, perhaps as a sponsor or as a friend.

It is difficult to know where to start. So understanding, as I do only too well, my own alcoholism, I will begin at the end.

It was in mid August that I heard he was gravely ill in hospital - that his life was probably ebbing away.  On receipt of this news I did what has become, down the years, a reflex action, I sought the advice of a fellow member of A.A. who knew my sponsor and my relationship with him.  His advice was very simple, “If you can, you must fly at once to be with him.”  I took a plane the same day and for the next five days sat with him each morning, afternoon and evening.  He lay in a cot in a tiny room by himself, he never regained consciousness at any time I was with him, but I think I found this time alone with him perhaps the most rewarding of my whole life.  While watching him, I was able to consider exactly where I was with gratitude, and what a blessed thing sponsorship had come to be for me.

I think I came to know for the first time what I understand good sponsorship to be.  It is, as I see it, not only the giving of one’s experience in time and love but also the complete opening up of one’s whole life in order that the sponsee may know every facet of the joy of living a full life in recovery.

This gift of opening up oneself is of course useless, unless the sponsoree is willing to take and use it.  Whatever my failings as a sponsoree may have been, I do not think I failed in this respect.  There is a line from ‘Anna and the King of Siam’, or if you are younger a song from ‘The King and I’ “Getting to know You” and this is what I did with my sponsor. Through getting to know him, I believe I supplied an outlet for him to share many of his favourite attitudes and pastimes.  We could carp and criticise at anything we disliked in our shared interest and would likewise applaud those things that we loved.  Maybe you will understand a little more of what I am trying to say if I am more specific.

We both loved detective fiction, Sayers, Christie, Marsh. However, the pinnacle, of course for us was always Edgar Wallace and his indefatigable Evans.  If depressed or despondent over anything at all, one of us would say “He sends out his racing tips on a duplicating machine that even a child could manage”, and this often used quotation of Educated Evans would make us dissolve into uncontrolled laughter and give us the lift that was needed to carry us on and oh so much better than alcohol or Benzedrine which we had used in our attempts to dispel bad feelings in the past.  Our favourite food was Omelette a` la Arnold Bennet, or a two course entreatment of whitebait and ice cream.  We both adored ice cream, and we had our favourite places for eating.

Another of our common interests was our love of horse racing, accompanied of course with the inevitable betting.  He had some fantastic experience to offer, which I never took.  He didn’t believe in doubling horses, he said “I never ask for two miracles in one day.”  After a long losing streak he would always trot out his favourite piece of alcoholic rationalisation and what he called ‘application of theology to betting’, “If God wanted me to stop backing horses, He would have made me back all losers!”  He loved Derby Day on the Curragh and in his latter years I had the bizarre experience, for me at least, of walking round Cheltenham race course with him on a hot July afternoon, “I have never been to Cheltenham races, but I want to tell my friends that at least I have been on the course.”

Our relationship was taken up with finding out about each other.  Our meetings were initially a filling in to each other of our recent experiences.  We travelled together, and as I expect you all know, travelling together with a friend will always reveal the others’s defects.  I remember so well his frantic fear on his first encounter with Roman taxi drivers.  When questioned about this fear after three days in Rome he calmly replied “I now take it as normal.”

He loved having things done for him.  I think it was that he liked to openly indulge himself.  I always travel ‘brush and polish’ and he loved to have me clean his shoes.  He told me that his greatest experience in A.A. had been on the occasion when he had stayed with Bill W. and Lois, Bill had always brought him early morning tea in bed.  He used to round off this account of life with the Wilsons with “You have no idea of the security it gives one to be served with early morning tea by the co-founder of A.A.!!

I was with him when a dispatch rider brought us notice of a private audience with His Holiness Pope Paul.  His only comment was “Do I have a clean shirt for the Pope?”  He had a wit that sometimes people would feel to be a little caustic.  I always felt this was untrue.  Had they been brave enough to look into his eyes they would have seen not sarcasm but a dancing loving fun.  A typical example of this was when an English army officer who had recently become a group secretary sought my sponsors’s advise about the ordering of literature from Service Office.  Having made a meal of the ordering of a few pamphlets the secretary finished by saying “And that pamphlet of yours which is put out by Dublin, we will have one of those”, to which my sponsor replied “A whole one?”

The single most significant influence he had on my life occurred one winter Sunday morning when returning from 6.30 a.m. Mass, scuffing the dead leaves with our feet he set me a simple poser.  “Do you find you have much difficulty in making your weekly commitment to the Mass?”  I considered as we walked on in silence and it came to me that there had been many Sundays when I had to really take myself by the scruff of the neck mentally and rearrange my Sunday wants to fit in with my Sunday needs in order to get to Mass.  I told him this and he replied very simply “You will find it easier when you make the mass your daily commitment” Thank God I found out how right he was.  We had our difference, but we each felt the freedom to disagree and maintain a standpoint in which we believed.

To all sponsorees reading this appreciation, I trust you will be able to make the effort to get to know your sponsor as I did mine and enjoy the fruits of an integral part of the life-giving experience available to us in the fellowship.

While in America recently I came across a toast which I think is very applicable to my sponsor at this time.

“Health and long life to you,

The girl of your choice to you

Land without rent to you

And death in Ireland”.

Health and long life he certainly had.  The girl of his choice I believe to be the world wide fellowship of A.A. to whom he gave his life.  Land without rent to you I believe to be the unqualified gift of sobriety given freely to him by God and A.A. in return for that life.  And death in Ireland is his for sure.

Anon.