Shortly after I finished college our house was repossessed by the bank and the family scattered to the four winds, with my mother going off to the UK to live close to her sister.
Some time later I had a call from my aunt telling me my mother had broken her hip after tumbling down the stairs drunk and the doctors were warning her that if she didn't stop drinking she'd be dead in 6 months. "You have to talk to her" my aunt insisted, "You're the only one she'll listen to," and despite my protestations that I was probably the last one, I was guilted into travelling the however many miles to the UK to persuade her that sobriety was her only alternative to imminent death.
I remember how she looked at me as I implored her to save her life and how she replied, as she had done so many times before, "I don't drink."
I never saw her again and she died a year or so later in some slummy apartment with fruit crates for furniture.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Posted in response to 
The prompt is 'how many miles'
The image is my own
