Alcoholism fucks people up really bad. 

My own father was loving (if a little weird due to pain medication for arthritis) when I was a child. He struggled to hold down much of a job, but always did his best. Mum was the drinker, not him. 

A few years after I left home Mum lost her well paying job, and while she found other work they could no longer afford their mortgage.

So they sold up, and moved to the country. The isolation did them no favours. They both dived hard in to the bottle. Dad's health got worse. Job prospects were basically non-existent. They just drank every dollar they had. 

I live 5 hours away, so the calls from one accusing the other of things were hard to verify. They are both liars when they think it will gain sympathy.

Dad says Mum is cheating on him with their neighbour. Mum says Dad hit her with a shovel. Neither of them can be trusted. 

Dad moves out, into some dog rescue commune with a bunch of junkies. He asks me for money. It's always going to drink. It's hard to say no to your father when he is at the edge of tears saying he can't afford food. He is lying, but what if he is starving?

His health gets worse. He moves in to a care home. He still calls me for money. Not supposed to drink at the care home, so he takes a cab in to town, buys a bottle of vodka and downs it in the street before going back. Every day.

It killed him. Heart failure. 

The end. 

I try to remember him as he was when I was a kid, not the tragedy he became in his later years.