community service

It's done. Rick's mom is officially no longer a resident of Wisconsin. It's a week I don't want to relive, but at the same time I'm glad I was able to do what was needed to be done.

Close Call
Where to start? My flight from Minneapolis to La Crosse was running behind, and so with less than 30 mins to catch my connecting flight at a completely different set of gates, I ran like the wind with my duffel bag strapped on my back. It took me the 15 mins of continuous running to the next concourse to make my flight. But what a relief to sit down knowing I wouldn't be delayed in Minneapolis.

Good Karma
When I arrived in La Crosse, karma was good. I'd reserved a full size car, largest car for the best economy. SUVs were priced almost double, so the full-size was going to have to do. Sure enough, when I checked in, they upgraded me to an SUV for the same price. What a miracle. It turned out that the SUV was absolutely necessary to get everything done.

I had talked to Linda, Rick's mom, the day before I left. She was not feeling well and I knew she couldn't keep sleeping in her apartment. I arranged for her to check in the night before I arrived, but as it turned out, she never went to the motel. But again, good karma prevailed and I found an online coupon for our motel that had two free nights with a five-night stay. So I ended up only having to pay for three nights.

Two Less Hands
Being 62 and not in good health, I knew Linda was not going to be doing much of the heavy lifting, but I quickly learned that she'd be better off out of my way while I attended to the task at hand. Out of sight and at the motel. Apparently she'd run out of her Xanax (for anxiety) and was going through withdrawals. She slept most of the days, and I'd check in on her to ensure she was getting lunch and dinner, and then I'd spend as much time at the high rise apartment to get her things situated.

Reality of the Situation
With the pictures I'd posted before I headed to La Crosse, I figured that I had a good sense for what I was walking into. I was wrong. I'll be the first to admit I don't understand hoarding. I understand mental illness...my mom has been depressed my entire life and in the last 10+ years, she's declined into border personality disorder. But that's another story....

Linda's apartment had flooded when she was out visiting. She'd gone back 10 days before I was able to come out to help. I'd hoped that she'd be motivated by the move to Washington that she'd make some progress on getting things cleared out before I got there.

I had landed at the airport around 2 pm on Wednesday and stepped foot into the apartment for the first time around 4 pm. The first phone call I made was to a local trash hauler who rented out large dumpsters. I found the apartment's maintenance guy to make sure I had an authorized place to have it delivered, and I made immediate arrangements to have a 20 yard dumpster delivered at 9 am Thursday morning. But even before that was to be delivered, there was a ton of work to do.

From 5 until 10 pm Wednesday night, I methodically began the disastrous clean up. It wasn't just stuff, it was trash....all over the floor. Papers, cigarette butts, pennies, bird seed, pills. You name it. It was not an apartment, it was a landfill. Crap shoved behind chairs, under tables...piled around every wall of the room.

At first I took great pains to sort through everything...ensuring I wasn't throwing away important papers, pills or pictures. Rubber gloves and industrial trash bags. I just started filling up the bags. The maintenance guy was incredibly helpful and equipped me with a dolly, furniture roller and a rolling laundry basket.

As soon as I cleared a corner, I started stacking furniture to get thrown or given away. In the other corner, I stacked the overstuffed garbage bags. By 10 pm on Wednesday, I felt I'd made good progress on the living room. All that was left in the living room was the sleeper couch, which had clothes and odds and ends piled on top that it was impossible to contemplate using the couch to sit down.

Full Days' Work
I was excited that the dumpster was delivered the next morning. As much as I could muster, I started hauling the bags of garbage I'd already bagged up to make room as I continued to sort and dispose of the apartment's contents. The next three days were long, but fruitful. Every morning I was up and at the apartment by 7 am, and not finishing up until 10 pm. On Thursday morning, I started to peel away at the bedroom. Nary an inch to walk into the room, I could see bed posts sticking out under the piles of stuff -- clothes, bags, papers and otherwise. Old VCR tapes, wire coat hangers wound up in cassette tapes. Orphaned socks, ad circulars. It didn't matter what it was. It was mixed up in the contents of the floor and shoved under the bed.

The one thing that surprised me the most was the absolutely barren state of the dressers. Once I cleared a path to investigate, drawer by drawer, I found each one empty. Perhaps because the usual contents were strewn all over the other areas of the apartment.

As I came across photos, clothing and jewelry, I set them aside so that Linda could look through them at a later time. I wanted to make sure we kept the things most important to her. Barreling through the bedroom, I was shocked to find there was a walk in closet. Not only a huge closet, but the whole thing was filled with trash. Boxes with papers sticking out, garbage bags that looked like they had been intended to be thrown away but never made it out the door. And then those garbage bags with rips as if she'd second-guessed what she'd thrown and made an attempt to re-review the contents.

On the floor, I found dishes with old food caked on them. Into the trash bag. Any shoes I found went into a plastic tub for sorting later. Any shoe without a match was tossed. Eventually I was able to get into the closet to start hanging up the clothes I'd found -- regardless of whether they were clean or dirty. My instructions to Linda were -- if you don't want it, take it off the hanger. If you want to keep it, leave it alone.

The bathroom was a stanky mess. More birdseed, dirt, and unidentified items on the floor which had perished in the flood. A bucket with filthy water and a mop sat in the corner. Make up without lids or covers went into the trash. Medications were organized and set aside for packing later. Countless toiletries were boxed as freebies for the neighbors.

Swap Meet
By Friday morning, the apartment was clean enough to let a few of the other apartment residents in to scope out the remaining salvageable items -- from a camping tent, cot & sleeping bags to ancient end tables.

Most of the other residents were elderly and clearly alone, and mostly forgotten. An 88-yr old lady known as Ma Carol was desperate to get her hands on anything not nailed down. "You make sure to save all those trinkets for me." I'd delivered a bag of clothes to her apartment only to find out that she too was a hoarder, albeit a cleaner one. I actually felt bad giving her more stuff to contribute to her hoarding, but c'est la vie. She also was insistent on getting Linda's bed frame and mattresses. I was able to scrounge up some tools to take the frame apart and promised to take it to her apartment only if she had someone else to put it in her apartment and reassemble it. Wouldn't you know it, I walked by later that afternoon and it had been cleared out of the hall.

Another sweet lady was so desperate for company she hijacked me and showed me her apartment, pleading with me to help her hang pictures. It really broke my heart to realize that none of these people had anyone around. Another sweet gentleman named John (whom I gave the air conditioner, vacuum and tent) asked me to write him.

Regardless of what was left by Saturday morning, the remaining apartment contents, save the clothes and few items which would be packed up for the train ride back to Washington, were going to be carried out by the movers. I had been able to dump a bunch of the garbage by Friday evening, but I could not manage the sleeper sofa and a few of the other furniture pieces. It only took them 45 minutes to carry out what I had not been able to.

A Storage Unit?
Just when I thought I'd seen the light at the end of the tunnel, Linda mentions she has some things at a storage unit a few blocks away. And so to avoid having any unnecessary ties back to La Crosse, we ventured to the unit. To my relief it was not a large storage unit, but it resembled a smaller version of the apartment. Clothes piled on garbage bags. Old cups of coffee fermenting on the floor. Bird seed everywhere. Really, bird seed here too? And of course an incredibly heavy air conditioning unit that I couldn't manage to carry out on my own.

I brought over the disposable gloves I'd been using and more garbage bags and proceeded to bag up the storage unit, leaving the air conditioner for the movers to come over and dispose of.

In the end, I'd probably bagged up 60-80 garbage bags, used 60 pairs of disposable gloves, filled up a 20 yard dumpster and met half of the buildings inhabitants when I delivered new-to-them items from Linda's apartment.

The Dirtiest Kitchen on Earth
Last, but not least was the kitchen. The fridge was unspeakable. Rotting food, nothing else. Health hazard for sure. Linda kept telling us there was a rat living in her apartment, but it was clear to me the only rat was her. Rotten bananas, sludge in the drawers.

The cabinets were not too bad, and easily cleared out. Though I did get a kick out of the 20 empty peanut butter jars stored upside down -- as if that would help get the remaining peanut butter out.

I came to the conclusion that her agoraphobia prohibited her from ever taking out her trash. That, combined with her constant fear of welfare checks by the city -- which triggered her to throw everything in the closet, bedroom, etc -- was the reason we were dealing with this condemned living situation. I'm actually surprised she didn't burn the place down with her smoking inside or the papers that were crammed against the baseboard heaters.

Final Clean & a Detour to ER
In vain, I'd tried to find a house cleaner. But with last minute requests and it being a weekend, I had resorted to asking our motel's maid if she moonlighted. She did and I was excited to be able to focus on packing up Linda's clothes and memorabilia to take on the train.

But things are never that simple. When I went to check on Linda on Saturday evening, she was in dire straits. Her refill for Xanax was not due for another week and she'd been in withdrawals for five days now. Unbeknownst to me, it was a code red situation. So instead of heading back to the apartment to continue the work, we headed to the ER.

Her panic and anxiety was now record and we patiently waited for the social worker to meet with us -- a discussion which would dictate whether or not she would get her much-needed medication. The subtext for this was that the doctor's office would not refill the medication. She'd had enough Xanax, but some how it disappeared before I arrived. Linda claimed someone had stolen it out of her apartment. As it's a Class 4 drug, there's a concern about it being abused or sold, so the protocol is to report the stolen meds to the police before the doctor could issue more meds. Of course, with her mental state at the time, Linda wouldn't call the police, so she'd been suffering through the withdrawals...that is until we went to the ER.

Throughout this time, she'd insisted that someone had stolen them, but there were moments where I thought she was on the verge of admitting she'd taken the extra as she panicked about the move and the city's frequent visits to ensure she was moved out by her eviction date.

Regardless, we left the ER following a great conversation with the social worker who was assured that Linda was in good hands and was on a path to a better place with the move to Washington.

Moving Cross-Country on Amtrak
I've never taken Amtrak, but one of the best things about their checked luggage policy is their flexibility. Each passenger can check 3 bags (3 ft x 3 ft x 3 ft) and 2 carry on bags. Between the two of us, we could check 6 boxes/bags and carry on 4.

I'd found some wardrobe boxes at the U-Haul that met the size requirements and allowed us to easily transport the clothing on hangers. Easy pack, easy unpack...my thinking. A little bit bulky, but it certainly kept the boxes under the 50 lb. requirement.

Going back to the SUV and good karma. Thank goodness for the space. By the skin of my teeth, I had been able to pack every box, suitcase and carry on bag in the car, leaving barely enough room to put Linda in the front seat to make our way to Amtrak.

The cleaning lady never made it, so Sunday morning I cleaned the counter surfaces and vacuumed after playing Tetris to get the boxes in the car.

The Trip Home
The plan was that I'd take Linda and the boxes to the train station early. I'd unload them and then return the rental car at the airport, then take a taxi back to the train station. Check in started one hour ahead of departure and we were ready at the station when the doors opened. Would you believe there weren't any carts or accessibility ramps at the train station, so I had to carry the boxes one by one from the outside to check them in.

I definitely didn't miss my personal trainer sessions that week. I logged 42 hours of hard labor, or as I affectionately now refer to as "my community service for a crime I didn't commit."

I was relieved to finally be on the train, of which we were seated in a very private section for the disabled. My only disappointment was that there weren't any sleeper cars available, and so we spent two incredibly uncomfortable nights on the train. Linda slept on the floor and I was curled up across our two seats. Our only saving grace was that I'd bought some cheap pillows and blankets before we left.

The food selection was a whole other issue. The first night on the train, we'd missed dinner, so we were relegated to the "lounge car" options. Cellophaned sandwich and burger. I took one bite and tossed it. Linda choked down her burger, and I vowed we'd not be eating that again. I'd also packed some water and snacks to tide us over.

The dining car proved to be only slightly better, although I was not allowed to purchase food and bring it to Linda and she wouldn't go upstairs. So the first day on the train, we were at the mercy of our attendant who went MIA for several hours. We'd pressed the call button and for two hours, no response. I went as far as to try and hunt her down without avail. I was incredibly frustrated that it took two hours to finally get someone's attention so that Linda and I could get lunch.

My other regret was that I didn't get to see Glacier National Park. We were supposed to get there at dusk, but a delay on the tracks put us behind several hours and so as the sun set, we were just getting to the east side of the park. Ah well.

On Home Turf
Man, it was a relief to be back in Seattle on Tuesday morning, after nearly two days on the train. Who would have thunk we would have arrived right in the middle of the Obama visit, which mucked up all of the traffic downtown?

But as soon as we got home, instead of collapsing on the bed for a nap, I immediately began to unpack the necessities and organize Linda's new life here in Washington. I figured if I didn't do it while I was amped up on adrenaline, it would never happen. That, and I wanted her to see what an organized life was like and that everything had it's place.

The next day I was back to work. It's busy season for me and so now I'm thrown right back into the daily grind. In fact, I should be working right now instead of updating this blog post, but if I don't do this now, I won't ever.

The Prognosis
Linda's definitely got a long way to go before she gets deprogrammed from the life she was living. But I have to say I don't think we could have done this any differently. If we had ignored the situation, she'd be homeless soon (as she was evicted) or would have succumbed to the environment.

She's definitely got mental health and physical health issues, and that will be a tax on us. However, I also realize that Rick has an opportunity to rebuild a relationship with his mom. She is also a potential help to us -- wanting to do laundry, take care of the dogs and even make us dinner. I could get used to that!

She's on the waiting list for a senior-subsidized place near our cabin. We'll see how long it takes to get in there. But in the mean time, our focus is on rehabilitating her and getting her settled so that she can start her new life in her new apartment without the autopilot behaviors she'd been doing over the past 7+ years.