How do you give help when they won't take it?
I started to blog under the title "This whole job thing is seriously cutting down my blog time," but since then have had a phone call from my mother. Here are the contents of that phone call. Numbers 1 and 4 are of particular importance to my point.
1) Starting with the moral of this number's story: Old people shouldn't drive. My step-grandmother struck another car head-on 18 months ago, sending the driver to the ICU. Yesterday he served her with papers: seeking medical damages (past and future), lost wages (past and future), and emotional damages or whatever they call that. She, of course, doesn't think it was her fault; she can't figure out why he was in her lane (he wasn't), why he wasn't wearing a seatbelt (he was), and why he would want to sue her. And we all know it's her fault, and we had been trying to stop her from driving for a long time, and moreover we're so thankful the man wasn't killed. (Literally hid her keys, were her taxi service, told her over and over not to drive, called her doctor and her insurance company, etc.) We were all afraid something like this would happen, and it has, and we're all biting the "I told you so" retort on our lips.
[begin tangential phone conversation news]
2) My grandpa's brother's wife (so my step-great-aunt)'s daughter was sleeping in her bed Sunday morning when a tree fell on her house, the trunk of which landed about 10 feet from her. So she called my step-great-aunt, who got into the car and stopped to grab some chicken on the way there (sustenance food, apparently)--
3) and at the drive-through, she placed her order but didn't hear anyone say anything, so step-great-aunt kept asking, "Are you there? Is someone there?" and after a couple minutes, someone came on and said, "I'm sorry. My husband just dropped dead." The ambulance came, there was a whole ordeal, etc. (Apparently it was a husband/wife fried chicken joint. Now it's just a wife's fried chicken joint)
[/tangent]
4) And most disturbingly, my psychotic 33-year-old cousin ran away. Long story short, every one in the family has tried to help him get some medical and psychological treatment; and as each person tries to help him, he turns against them. Now he has left a note, taken his ID and nothing else, not even his car ("so you can't trace me"), and disappeared. We don't think he's a danger to other people, but what if he is, and what if he does something stupid and deadly or stupid and violent? How can we search for someone who doesn't want to be found, take home someone who doesn't want to go home, give care to someone who doesn't want care, or help someone who asks for it, but won't take what is offered?
And so I close my dilemma in a better author's words:
"'Help,' he said, 'is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.'
"'And so it is,' he said, using an old homiletic transition, 'that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed.'"
Frustratingly,
Angloesque