Its not easy to deal with the loss of people we care about. My empathy is with you. And prayers for all who suffer. As has been said here, I too have lost sponsers. And so many days their loss is still felt, but at the same time, with what God and AA and those sponsers,have given me, I get to celabrate their lives and carry on their legacy. All three had instilled in me through their example what linbaba in has post yesterday about the responsability pledge.
Give for the hell of giving, cause I been a taker and a user most of my life. And as they taught me and countless others, giving for the hell of giving is the antidote for that debilitating condition. And what I have to give thats most valuable is my time and experience with alcoholism, no matter how limited that might be at any given time.

Brownie died of old age with over thirty years. He would have had nine more, but like a lot of us, sobriety lost its priority for a while. He and his wife Sarah were old school. Most of the people they worked with started off their sobriaty on their couch for the first thirty or sixty days or so.They were the greatest bullshit sifters I have ever known. They were a tag team. When Brownie died, they had a memorial for him at his getaway place in Beaver UT that turned into an AA campout party with over a hundrd friends there. After a wonderfull AA talk they put his ashes in an old civil was cannon and blew them into the Utah wilderness he loved so much. In the beginning he would always say to me " I dont give a damn how you feel jackass, I give a damn about what your doing." 

My other Sponser Gary's story is a little more tradgic. A few years back, he had a wreck on his harley and landed on his head. He had trama to his brain and was in a coma for three months. When he came out, he was not in good shape. Loss of motor skills, and he could not get the thoughts from is brain to his mouth right. He told me his mind worked the same but it didnt come out right. He wasnt able to help others anymore he thought and was dying of untreated alcoholism. After about a year and a half like that he put a rope around his neck and stepped off the picinick table under the tree in the back yard. He didnt drink, but he knew that drinking was not the problem for a real alcoholic. Helping others for free and for fun is what was at the center of his life, and then he couldnt do it anymore. He and I, along with other guys we worked with would go to detox, co jail, and the prison every week, and go fishing ( as he liked to call it) for other guys who were dying. " I voted for new managment In step three, and this is what he wants me to do "  is what he would always say.

The amazing thing that God and AA have done for those of us who grab on to this way of life, is that our perseption of reality has been changed from a sickining consern with self, to a genuine consern with others. And as a result, instead of an ongoing morning and grieving of what I perseve as MY LOSS, I can celabrate life and what others who are gone have left behind, and then keep passing it along, for free and for fun.

Thank you for sharing about the passing of your sponser, It moved me to reflect on things that are good to reflect on.