The Shroud

I saw a woman on the street the other day who was obviously drunk. I saw her from behind and could see that she was staggering. Having staggered quite a bit myself, I gave her a wide berth on the sidewalk, familiar as I am with the vagaries of momentum when it comes to someone who’s been drinking.

Inconspicuously as I passed I took a quick look back and did a double take, as I recognized her from one of the larger recovery meetings I attend in my neighborhood. Like many of the people I know from that meeting, while I recognized her face I didn’t know her name.

I thought about stopping, but she was with a friend, somebody who seemed completely baffled by her condition. At the corner they slowed down to talk and the woman I knew swayed unevenly as she tried to collect herself. The two conversed briefly, with the friend pointing one way up the street and the other shaking her head and waving in exactly the opposite direction.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could imagine the conversation.

“Your apartment is that way,” says the concerned friend.

“No, this way,” says the drunken woman, totally convinced.

I slowed down to see how the situation was going to play out, and after a moment of additional dialog, the drunken woman gesticulated broadly with her arms and began to stagger off in the direction she had pointed, a direction, clearly indicated by the look of exasperation and bewilderment on the face of her friend, that led away from where she ought to be heading, not toward it. 

It was a scene I could well have been acting out myself a number of years ago—and a scene I realize I could find myself in again should I decide to pick up a drink. I felt a twinge of sadness as I stood there, watching the woman disappear down the street, headed inevitably for another bar and who knows what additional hell. I felt another twinge of sadness as I turned back toward the woman’s friend who stood briefly on the corner, hands at her side, looking particularly deflated, like an airbag after an accident. I realized this part of the scene could have been me, too, raised as I was in an alcoholic home, consistently baffled by the inexplicable actions of a drunken mother.

The whole thing took only a few moments and they were gone as quickly as they had come, yet I was left with a feeling of frustration as I turned the corner onto the street where I live, wondering if there was anything I could have said, anything I could have done. I had just seen the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of the Lois Wilson story, When Love Is Not Enough, a few days earlier and couldn’t help but conjure up a picture in my mind of the presentation’s “old-time” AA members swooping in and scooping up both women from the street corner, depositing one in the parlor for Bill to talk to and the other in the kitchen for Lois.

I thought about the two women, isolated on different ends of alcoholism, and it brought to mind the AA saying, “When anyone, anywhere reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that: I am responsible.”

As I made my way home, a certain sadness came over me, an awareness of just how tenuous sobriety can be, how difficult it can be to find it and how easily it can be lost. Like a shroud, the feeling remained until later that night when I went to my regular AA meeting. There I found a roomful of grateful and sober alcoholics, just like me, and the shroud dissipated into the night.

In My Shoes is reprinted with permission from the recovery website Sober24.com (Copyright 2010 Hazelden Foundation)