SO, i've spent some time off the computer lately. it's quite lovely really. i seemed to be less stressed when i avoid the computer and all it's world of information. my days are quiet and i like that. i like that my days go slow at times so that i can sit back and absolutely enjoy everything around me. but quiet, slow days also make me think. and contemplate. then think some more. i've been thinking a lot about my dad and how on earth am i ever going to be able to talk with him again, let alone build back a relationship.
i haven't spoken to my father since i left arizona at the beginning of january. i just haven't been able to bring myself to do it. because i know that when i'll call, all i'll hear from him is "you threw this away!" "i can't find this paper, you must have thrown that away as well!" or "i want my birdcage back. i changed my mind, i NEED it." sigh. i can't deal with that.
so i better start at the beginning.
back in august, i had a conversation with my brother about my dad and his situation. i've said time and time again to my family members that my worst fear for my father is that he would die in his house and no one would know for days. and when they did suspect something wrong, no one could get into the house because he was the only one with the keys. and when they finally did get in the house no one could find him because of the junk filled to the ceiling. sigh.
my dad has been a hoarder since i can remember. (i'm pretty sure my OCD for cleanliness comes from living in a home so over run with junk i felt i was being smothered.) while growing up, my mother used to keep the communal rooms of our house as tidy as one could with a hoarder husband but one can only take the managing of junk for so long, and soon after the last of her kids moved out, so did my mother. once she was gone my dad changed the locks and no one other than my dad went in the house. for over seven years no one entered. and i could only imagine what it looked like.
while talking with my brother that fateful day, i suggested that we all should go and clean out the house. see what kind of disrepair it was in and try to get my dad to find a new living situation. of course in my mind this was all hypothetical and something we would do years from now. but my brother said he could do it over the christmas holidays. before i knew it, he had bought a plan ticket, talked with my father, got my other brother to agree to come help and had my mom on board as well. what the what? so that was it. i had to do it because it was MY idea after all.
originally it was only supposed to be a week of cleaning out the house. but at the end of that week i knew my mom would still need help gathering her things together to take back to her house. so i decided to stay another week while my brothers flew home. i seriously think i was delusional to even consider staying. but i did. and it SUCKED.
at this point in writing i feel i can only write out a point by point synopsis of what i encountered cleaning that house. mostly because i truly have no words for the amount of laziness i witnessed in my father.
- the first day we filled a 6 ton dumpster to the brim. we had just cleaned out the backyard and garage. that wasn't even the HOUSE yet.
- once we got in the house, my dad would only let us start in the laundry room. there was a pile of bags from the floor to nearly the ceiling. those bags happened to be laundry bags from hotels full of dirty clothes. and instead of washing those dirty clothes, my dad put them in the bags, tied them up and then put them in the laundry room. so what did he do when he ran out of clean clothes? oh, well he went the thrift store and bought new ones. but he wouldn't throw the dirty ones away. oh no. he saved them in bags. in a pile. that reached nearly the ceiling. you got that? MY DAD WAS TO LAZY TO DO LAUNDRY THAT HE WOULD RATHER JUST GO BUY NEW ONES. seriously? yes.
-after cleaning out the laundry, we moved into the kitchen. i honestly don't know where to begin. my father is not only a hoarder but a gambler as well. i won't go into too much detail on that subject for personal reasons but let's just say the casino's REALLY loved my dad. and they gave him lots of crap disguised as gifts. he got so many "gifts" in fact that that is the majority of the junk we had to throw away. oh, and mail. lots and lots and lots and lots of mail. over seven years worth of newspapers and advertisements.
- so my dad never did dishes. and i bet you can guess where i'm going with this. once he finished eating something, he would drop the plate wherever he was eating and leave it there. i found years old plates under piles of paper. yeah. so what did he do when he ran out of clean plates and silverware? why he just took plates, glasses, silverware and bowls from the casino's of course. sigh. i. just. have. no. words.
- i have never thrown away so many condiment packets, crackers packets, boxes of nuts, cans of years old soda, bottles of juice, boxes of chocolates and bags of all sorts of flavored popcorn. (i'm shaking my head right now.)
- my dad can't eat nuts or popcorn by the way. yet for some reason he had an exorbitant amount of it.
- mixed in with all this junk were important papers, pictures and electronics.
- i found several boxes worth of batteries. because he would buy a pack of batteries, lay them down somewhere, forget where he laid them and then he'd have to go buy another pack. sigh. seriously.
- my dad has a bird. he claimed he loved this bird but yet the whole time we were there he hardly did anything with it. the bird's cage also looked like he had never cleaned it in the two years he owned it. so when i told him that he needed to clean it, he said that he should just get rid of the bird. what? that's right MY DAD WOULD RATHER GIVE AWAY SOMETHING HE ABSOLUTELY LOVED TO AVOID CLEANING OUT IT'S CAGE. (the more i type, the angrier i'm getting. which is probably why i was putting off writing about this.)
- we found nearly 300 pairs of hotel slippers. still in there wrappers. WHY???
-we tried to have a garage sale but it pretty much was a bust. when someone tried to make an offer, my dad would laugh and say "for that? no that's worth WAY more than that!" or he would say "that's not for sale! i don't know why that is out." my favorite was "that is already sold. someone is coming back for it." no one EVER came back for anything. oh, and believe me we tried REALLY hard to get him to go somewhere else for the days we were trying to sell. no deal.
while we were cleaning all this stuff out, my father sat on a chair outside. he didn't do anything. just sat there, sometimes listening the the radio. from time to time he would argue with us about things he needed or said mean things to try to get a reaction out of us but i knew it was the addictions talking. i knew because that's how i was when i was first admitted into the eating disorder clinic. vicious and hateful toward anyone who was trying to help. it's your last grasp on your addiction. your holding onto it for dear life and you hate anyone trying to get you to let it go.
my brothers and mom where trying to cater and be nice to my dad during this time but i kept having to explain to him that being nice wasn't going to help. being tough and mean right back was what he needed. we needed to be not trusting of his every action. ignore his every mean word and basically make him do what he needed to do until he broke. once he broke, that's when the caring, nurturing, helping person could come out. until he broke, he was going to be manipulative, lying, conniving, mean and horrible. he would still be down deep in his addiction until he broke. and i knew all this because i had done everything that he was doing. i could call his bluff for i saw the lies. i think in the end, my dad liked me the least because we were the same. i knew what he was going through but i was on the other side. i had broke. and while my addiction will never fully go away, i have it under much better control than i ever have. my dad on the other hand didn't believe he needed to go to therapy. he didn't think he truly had a problem. i told him, until he learned to deal with the under lying things that were causing the addictions, he would never get better. and he couldn't get over those things without help from someone else. he still denied he needed help and blamed me several times through out my stay for his addictions. he wanted to hurt my feelings. he wanted to offend me. i only laughed at him and told him it wasn't me that got this junk. it wasn't me that made him gamble his life away. if my eating disorder was what was making him gamble and hoard, well now that i was better he surely could be better too. my response went on deaf ears. he hasn't broke. and i don't know if he ever will. i left my dad's house without a goodbye. no hug. no thank you. in the end i don't think i was expecting one either. i know i turned his life completely upside down. i know that i took away all his friends by making him sign a form making it impossible for him to ever enter a casino again. i know that i left him not knowing how to cook, shop or do laundry for himself. and i know that i was leaving him all alone with a new life he had to figure out. if i could have stayed to make his transition easier, i would have. if i could have stayed to make sure he went to addict meetings, i would have. if i could have stayed and brought him meals, i would have. but i couldn't and that's a regret i'll always have. just cleaning out someone's house won't ever fix the problem. it's my dad that needed the cleaning. the therapy.
