Back From F'ing-FL - Part 3

 

More fun facts about F-FL: We had to eat in restaurants while we were in F-FL, except for breakfast, because we worked long hours every day humping heavy boxes, and by the end of the day we were exhausted. People approaching 70 should not do such hard labor, and definitely not for 5 weeks straight, 7 days/week, and if I ever make noises like I’m going to do it again, someone stop me!

Here’s the selection of “vegetables” available in all the restaurants we went to, except the estimable Da Vinci’s: French fries; sweet potato French fries; something called a “loaded” baked potato, that came encased in salt and therefore inedible, and had scattered over the top of it some tiny julienne yellow and white bits that had no flavor – these were also on all the “salads”; and macaroni and cheese.  Yup, in F-FL, mac and cheese is a vegetable. “Salad” consisted of chopped iceberg lettuce, sometimes with a very small blob of tasteless chopped up things that were the color of tomato, with the tasteless yellow and white bits, and lots of thick, sweet, glop on top.

Everything in F-FL was breaded, including - the one time I found some on a menu -  broccoli. I ordered a chicken sandwich at a Dunkin’ Donuts one day out of desperation, and ended up with a lump of breaded chicken on a croissant with the little yellow and white bits on top.

And all the fruit, including the strawberries which were supposedly in season down there, were tasteless, except for the one time I managed to get to a farm stand. Asparagus was also in season, but finding some in the grocery store was almost impossible – I got one of the only 3 bunches available one day, and it wasn’t fresh. Something called “winter squash soup” was so sweet it resembled pudding. And “sour dough” bread wasn’t.

Sweetie’s Diner did have a wicked fine lemon cake, however. Both Sweetie’s and Da Vinci’s are in Ft. Pierce, if you ever have the bad fortune of being there. And there’s an interesting little store somewhere in the Peacock District that is jam-packed with strange and interesting things. I got some wooden crocodiles there for my nieces, and a shirt from India. And if I’d wanted, I could have had a moose statue, or statues of a giraffe, a lion, and some other critters – when I say “statue,” I mean big, like many feet tall. They filled the sidewalk outside the store.

What I think about now I’m home again

Can a friendship survive when one of the friends becomes a care-taker for the other, especially when the one needing help doesn’t really believe she does, and is mad as hell about how it’s being undertaken?

And, maybe more to the point, when the one being care-taken chooses not to communicate, about anything?

My friend in F-FL has become a hoarder, and, like all hoarders, she doesn’t believe it. And, like all hoarding, it eventually created health and safety issues. And, like for all hoarders – the stuff has become more important than the people.

Hoarding is a mental and emotional illness, often developing out of fear and feelings of unworthiness, emptiness, or insecurity. I’ve known, and liked, several other hoarders. They’re all the same, and yet, all different.

When I was in college, I rented a room one semester from a really nice, intelligent, artistic lady whose kids were away at college. She’d recently gone through a nasty divorce, during which her ex-husband had disappeared with all their money, leaving her and the kids without an income, and for at least a couple of years, they were often hungry, cold, and in despair. By the time I met her, she had built in her basement a maze made of walls of packaged goods, through which one had to wend one’s way to reach the washer and dryer. The walls were head high, and she knew exactly what foods were located where in the maze. If one of her kids came home from college and took a few things to bring back to school with them, only minutes would pass before all hell broke out. It didn’t matter that some of that stuff was long past its expiration date; she wasn’t going to be left hungry and needy ever again.

Another hoarder who I liked very much had an entire house full of stuff: coat closets filled to the top with unopened mail, a refrigerator filled with multiple, open but barely used, containers of dressings, mustard, relish, ketchup, mayo, relish, pickles; and rotting piles of once-fresh produce and meats that she was sure she was going to use up any minute now. Her car couldn’t be put into her 2-car garage, because when you opened the doors, a mass of stuff fell out – it was piled ceiling-high with trash and not-trash, and it was hard to tell the difference. Below the laundry shoot in her basement, there was a mountain of decades-old dirty clothes that was almost ceiling-high and at least 50 feet in circumference. Over the years, field mice had gotten into it and made tunnels and nests, had babies, died, peed, pooped…and her cats had gone after the field mice and added to the pee and poop. And mold grew… that mess took a group of specialists in hazmat suits and respirators to clear out. She also had the stereotypical ceiling-high piles of newspapers in her living room, and a refrigerator-carton filled with deyhtcades-old catalogs, and a walk-in closet filled to above waist-height with stuff she’d bought and never used, just tossed in there “to deal with later” – clothes, books, shoes, notepads, you name it.

F-FLF's living room before estate sale

She is a very intelligent, successful business person; but her hoarding started when she got divorced and was left with two young kids to raise on her own. And like all hoarders, she didn’t believe she’s a hoarder – we just didn’t understand the sentimental reasons for keeping stuff, or that a single mom ( by the time I knew her, her kids were in college) had not enough time for the niceties of doing laundry regularly, putting new purchases away, sorting through her frig, and all those catalogs and junk mail and piled-up newspapers might contain important info, so she needed to go through them before getting rid of them. Because - you never know, even decades later. And don’t toss those baby clothes at the bottom of the laundry pile, because they were her kids’, and she wanted to keep them for grandchildren. She, by the way, like my F-FLF also had enough underwear to clothe her entire neighborhood for a couple of weeks.

Sigh.  You can’t argue with a hoarder, because they literally don’t see what we see. Where we see gross excess and filth, they see luxurious spaciousness, comfortable abundance, and they also see the things filling that space as those things were in their once pristine state, not the moldy, mildewed mess the things have become. And they always, always have multiple, perfectly sensible reasons why things are as they are – single mothers who work often don’t have enough time to keep up with chores; hoarders with other illnesses often are too tired or depressed to manage their environment (though they always seem to have time and energy enough to acquire and collect more stuff); some people are more sentimental about objects once associated with a baby, or a loved but dead relative, or a lost life-style; some of us are  often on the edge of financial disaster, so we need to keep some back-ups on hand.

Oh, We New Englanders

Some of us come by the tendency to keep stuff naturally – New Englanders, who are the group I have genetic history with, have always had The Four Rules: 1. Don’t throw anything out, it or parts of it might come in handy later; 2. If it’s new, it’s too good to use, so set it aside and use up the old one until you really can’t possibly use it any longer; 3. If it belonged to, or was made by, someone who’s now dead, don’t use it because that circumstance makes it precious. Save it for the next generation, even if, whatever it is, is beyond ugly, useless in the modern world, been used hard, or you hate it; 4. If you personally spent money for something, even if it doesn’t quite fit, doesn’t look good on you, you’ve outgrown it, or you no longer like it - don’t get rid of it, it’s too good to get rid of. You may be glad you have it, later.

Time was, when we as a culture actually owned a lot fewer things than most of us do now, and we had a lot less money to spend on more stuff, these “rules” served us well. But it also explains the barns full of “string too short to be saved”: old windows with rotting frames, semi-shredded screens and broken tools, and attics full of moth-eaten great-grandma’s clothes and great-great-grandpa’s cigar humidors and old boots and mildewed overcoats, broken children’s toys and ancient, rusty cookware with missing handles. 

It also explains the old folks I lived up the road from in Maine, who lived in a trailer parked next to their lovely old Colonial house. He was a retired pastor; they’d had kids, who’d grown up and moved away decades ago.

They carefully collected and filled their house – literally – full of things they were sure their kids would want, once they’d set up their own households and had space for the stuff. Decades went by, the kids never came for the treasures; and one day, a passing antiques dealer stopped at the trailer and asked if he could take a stroll through the house and maybe offer the old couple some money for things he could sell on. Well; they thought about it, and finally decided it wouldn’t hurt to let the guy take a look and see what he would offer. Maybe the kids would be as happy to get some cash, even more than the treasures, after all.

So they handed over the key to the house, and Antiques Guy happily went next door. The house hadn’t been opened in a long time, and it took him awhile to get the old lock to work, and then the door was hard to open, probably swollen with time. Finally he managed to yank it open: and a whole wall full of rotting stuff fell out onto him. He hastily shoved it all back in the door, slammed the door shut, locked it, and got out of town as fast as possible.

 The Four Rules also explain the several packages of brand-new but decades-old sheets my grandmother had stashed in her linen closet when she died. I was actually happy for those, and have put all but one set – which I still have in its original packaging, because I may need it later – to use. And it explains the hand-made moccasins I bought in 1984, but only began to actually wear 2 years ago.

I’m willing to concede that there’s hoarding, and then there’s hoarding. When the stuff you have is based on real need, and/or doesn’t interfere with your ability to move around in and use your living space, and you aren’t constantly adding to it just because something you don’t need catches your eye and you want it – it’s a controlled, not-illness kind of hoarding. We almost all do it to a small extent, and sometimes to a large extent – artwork, “collectibles,” books (it’s not hoarding if it’s books unless it’s out of control and you can’t bring yourself to get rid of the ones you know you’ll never read again – or can’t recognize that you actually won’t read a lot of those books ever again), intriguing food items you’ll never actually eat that clutter the pantry, shoes, comic books, baseball cards, candles, etc. And don’t forget the stuff we New Englanders stock-pile in our cellars in case of winter storms knocking out electricity for days or sometimes weeks at a time. Some “hoarding” just makes sense – as long as we follow the “first in, first out rule,” and actually rotate the goods every few months.

But when you have piles in your living areas that you have to dance around or that you regularly trip over; or you can’t use a closet because it’s jam-full of either trash or stuff you’ve had a long time but never used or never use now; or if you’re continually buying things you want, don’t need, can’t afford, and don’t have a place or use for; or if the darker side of collecting has set in and you can’t get rid of even the rotten things, the mouse-infested things, the things causing fire hazards or other health and safety issues, or your neighbors can’t bear to look at all the rusty junk piled up in your yard – it’s an illness. And, unfortunately, it’s dangerous.

Tracing the Path of Illness

My F-FLF has the illness. Her trip into hoarding is complicated, and I’ve tried to follow its path, but it’s hard to say when interests and background, unfulfilled ambitions and personal oddities made worse by some chronic illness, morphed into Uh-Oh. When we (Cousin P and I) moved her out of her condo permanently into her dad’s house two years ago, Uh-Oh had clearly started; in the two years since, Uh-Oh has become Oh No! and the very dark part of hoarding is manifest.

Hers is a long story, and included in it are all sorts of things that in her case have probably added to the problem. She was an Army Brat; her bio-father was abusive; her adopted father who rescued her and mom wasn’t close to his family and had his own past issues, and was also career Army. She inherited Lupus from her mom who had RA. As a young woman she had anorexia, which is another mental illness that warps the mind so it sees not reality, but excess where there is meagerness (kind of interesting because hoarding is the opposite). She has OCD, which certainly added an enabling layer to the anorexia, and then the hoarding. She’s intelligent, but never accomplished the things in the world that her intelligence would cause one to expect from her – lupus became her reason not to, and for whatever reason, she didn’t pursue ways to work around it, or to achieve things she wanted to do, in spite of it. And then she added a long list of other ailments to her “why I can’t” reasons.

I’m in some ways a bad friend because, because of my medical training and the patients I’ve treated who have every ailment she claims to have, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for her “why I can’t” list. And I’ve conducted some experiments, and proved to myself that her list is more a handy set of excuses than true restrictions. Having said that – there is clinical depression; and buying stuff on line is easy, always available, and gives a blast of endorphins when one does it, and when the package arrives. And if you’ve had a too-indulgent father who has bailed you out of financial straits – well – I suspect that’s how The Hoarder was born. In her case, not just one urge or disappointment or scary situation, but an entire array of them.

Part of F-FLF's bedroom at assisted living, in May

I can’t decide whether being able to trace this path is useful or harmful when it comes to maintaining a friendship with someone for whom I’ve also become a care-giver. There are other more recent medical problems – some developing memory issues, some developing personal hygiene issues, questions about proper meds dosing, uncertainty about whether some of her “diagnoses” are real or ones she’s invented for herself – I know some of them are fictional because she’s accidentally told me so when she wasn’t paying attention, but they’re very dramatic. She’s become unable, or unwilling, to manage all the practical parts of her life – bill paying, answering her phone, checking her voice mails, managing her finances, doing laundry, and so on.

And here’s the thing, and maybe it’s my problem, and not hers. She no longer communicates. She doesn’t answer emails, she doesn’t answer letters, she doesn’t call unless she wants something, and I don’t call her – though I email and write several times every week – because I don’t want to shout at her. So – is she still my friend? This has gone on much longer than the last few months. It’s been so for the last year or more. We used to talk on the phone, but only if I called her. I now hear about her circumstances and activities, or lack of them, from third parties. (I also hear how angry she is at her cousin and I because we had to get rid of a lot of her stuff when she moved to assisted living, from third parties.)

Does she need to be my friend any longer? Do I even want her to be? I discovered, spending time with her two years ago when I went to help her after her father died, and then when Cousin P and I went down to move her out of her condo and permanently into her dad’s house, that she’s changed a lot since I first met her, more than 40 years ago, and I don’t really like who she’s become. She’s become paranoid, expecting home invasions to imminently happen, afraid of public transportation, Ubers, taxis, etc. She’s become at least mildly racist. She’s converted and become very religious in the church that I was raised in and got over long ago. She’s become anti-abortion, anti-women’s rights, and very socially conservative. She tsks when gay people appear, having become anti-gay marriage. I’ve not asked about transgender issues because I don’t really want to know. She insists that the man she divorced after a very short marriage, more than 30 years ago, is still her husband. She’s become even more snobbish about her intellect and the lesser intellect of other people than she ever was. And she’s also become pretty unfriendly – she seems to be more interested in what acquaintances can do for her than in developing the relationships.

Several months ago I tried to explain to her that a one-sided friendship isn’t a friendship. I reminded her, as an example, that I wrote to her – postcards and letters – 6 days every week, and had done so for almost 2 years; but she never responds. Would she, please, for the 5^th time I’d asked, email me once a week so I could be sure she wasn’t lying in a pool of her own blood because she’d tripped over something and it was the weekend and her care-giver wouldn’t find her body for at least 4 days? She thought about it for a moment or two, then said, “I suppose that’s reasonable.”

So to answer my own question: yes, I think a friendship can survive when one of the friends becomes also a care-giver for the other – if the one being cared for remains a vital, active part of the friendship, and if capable, of the care-giving as well.

I think I’ve lost my friend. And I’m not sure why it bothers me so much. Her hoarding has, and will continue, to create problems in my care-taking of her; but hoarding isn’t the reason I’ve lost my friend. And I'm just very sad, and alternately frustrated or furious.

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com    8 May 2023

Photos: of the AL room, sent by her local care-giver; other photos Deb Marshall

 

How my rhubarb looked just 4 days ago! It's thrice the size now!