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Hope For The HopelessFrom Hope to Hopeless On December 12, 1994, Teresa Jane McGovern, the daughter of former U.S. Senator and Democratic Party presidential nominee, George McGovern, walked out of a Madison, Wis. bar, staggered into a parking lot, fell into a snow bank, went to sleep and froze to death. She was 44, but for 31 or her 44 years, she suffered with alcoholism, drug abuse and depression. Through the years of her tragic life, Terry was in and out of countless alcohol and chemical dependency treatment centers, and even in the last four weeks of her life she had gone through detoxification six times. It begs the question—Are some people beyond hope? If someone repeatedly fails, treatment center after treatment center, and nothing seems to turn the tide of bad decisions, is there really anything that can be done, or are they just doomed to die in a snow bank? Terry McGovern’s story touches something in me, because I don’t believe anyone is hopeless, but I do believe people die as a result of not wanting to be helped, or not wanting the help that is offered. Her family history included alcoholics, so Terry was predisposed to the disease. She started drinking with her friends when she was 13, and she routinely did alcohol, marijuana and LSD. She got pregnant when she was 15 and subsequently had an abortion. When her father won the nomination for president in 1972, Terry’s addiction became very public, and that just added to the problem. She described her father and mother as distant and aloof. The picture was one of being very alone, searching for something that was always out of reach. Terry’s clinical depression was a double whammy, as it is so hard to separate the alcoholism from the depression. Her story touches me because for eight years in her life, during her 30’s, she was sober. Seemingly out of the woods, with two children to care for, she fell back into depression and took to alcohol after her significant other, the father of her children, left her. That event was more than she could handle and she retreated into the bottle. After her death, George McGovern threw himself into research about alcoholism. He wrote the book “Terry: My Daughter's Life-and-Death Struggle With Alcoholism.” The book is open and honest, as McGovern looks back at their relationship and grieves the loss of his daughter. "But if I could recapture Terry's life, I would never again distance myself from her no matter how many times I had tried and failed to help her, McGovern wrote. “Better to keep trying and failing than to back away and not know what is going on. If she had died despite my best efforts and my close involvement with her life up to the end, at least she would have died with my arms around her, and she would have heard me say one more time: 'I love you, Terry." Terry was offered treatment on countless occasions. She made free will decisions to walk out of treatment centers. She always returned to the alcohol to fill the spiritual and emotional voids in her life. From a clinical viewpoint, I don’t know what could have been done to help Terry, other than perhaps having her committed and forcing long-term treatment on her. Sometimes we need people to step in and save us from ourselves. From a spiritual standpoint, the help was always there for her. God reaches out to us and never gives up hope, but we reject God’s love and compassion. Could she have been helped? Yes. Terry had given up by the time she hit that snow bank. She had rejected the hope. I find it difficult to believe there is any such thing as “hopeless” because I have seen what God does when allowed to intervene. Don’t give up hope for someone you love. Keep trying, keep fighting and don’t let go. Ned Wicker is the Addictions Chaplain at Waukesha Memorial Hospital Lawrence Center
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