Hitting Bottom . . . Or not

This morning I was presented with another opportunity to "be of service" while simultaneously staring "what might have been" square in the face.  The mother of the woman who nearly died of an alcoholic seizure was at the meeting, the woman who tearfully confessed to me a few days ago that she had finally "hit rock bottom" and then promptly disappeared from my meeting room.  Out of kindness to her I refrained from saying that for many people rock bottom is six feet under so pardom me if I withhold judgment for a while.  Eh, maybe I should have said it?  Who knows.  Tough love V an expression of kindness usually means a light touch with me.  I leave the  straightforward honesty to men and women better suited temperamentally to deliver it.

Mom asked me to walk with her to the daughter's apartment to say hello.  I was hesitant, not entirely sure if the daughter wanted company - actually completely certain that she didn't want any company -  but decided to go to support the mother.  The scene was not entirely unfamiliar: studio apartment, bed unmade, TV tuned to reruns of The Carol Burnett Show from like 1896, pajamas the attire du jour, and a cup of instant ramen noodles on the breakfast menu.  The young woman rarely raised her eyes above parallel.  The mother . . .  well .  . . mothering away in a fairly heavy-handed manner, very loving but trying mightily to steer her daughter into treatmen ideally but onto a healthier path at a minimum.  I didn't add much to the encounter.  To me the woman was, on this particular day, not worth my effort.  I was glad I could say hello and tell her I loved her but she clearly had no interest in any solution-based stuff.  She didn't appear to be drunk but she might have been on something and she was so, so deep into self-pity and immature defiance that any hopeful message was beyond her ability to absorb.  All I could tell mom on the walk back to her car was that it's really, really hard to get sober if you really, really want to get sober.  If you don't want to work at it then it's going to be nigh impossible.

In this case it's a lot easier for me - 36 years in and not a relation - to take this cold-sounding approach.  I'm happy to help in any way I can but I'm not going to pound my head on a rock talking to someone who isn't listening.  

This is another case that has given me a good shaking up.  It's like finding a badly injured bunny by the side of the road and watching it suffer.