Digging In

It's been a weekend!
Yesterday we shopped for the bed and found one. It will be delivered on Wednesday. J accepted the offer of the current bed, as he sleeps on a futon, so that all worked out pretty well. After errands, we stopped for an early dinner at a tiny Mexican restaurant, one we'd been to once before when it was featured on Check Please in Chicago. You can't get into the place during normal dinner hours. It washed the taste of Indian Cuisine out forever.

I spoke with BossFroc, who called from Marrakesh, to give med orders. It's great now that she (her hubby) has an International cell phone. I'll bet the food there is "interesting" too.

Disturbing was my hour long discussion with Ger last evening. Not surprisingly, his version of what transpired at the attorney's office on Friday, and more importantly, the fall out afterwards, was a little different than Mom's.

While we've always known Dad had a problem with collecting/shopping/hoarding, we (at least I) didn't know the full extent of the problem. Sure he bought everything from stamps and antiques and junk he claimed were of value to books and toys and houses and cars, but, heck, I figured he earned the money and researched the stuff (there were always catalogs laying around and he read newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, etc) and it was just another way for him to invest, which he also did in real estate and the stock market in years gone by.

But now, and at least for the last few years, for whatever reason, maybe the Perfect Storm health-wise, he buys everything, from food he shouldn't be eating to you-name-a-piece-of-crap. When I was there last week I attempted to clean out his van. The man can open a library with his books alone....except libraries don't keep old moldy books. There are bicycles everywhere. He's got "art" and toys and tools and you name it, he brings more home everyday. I threw out rotting food! It was truly mortifying.

He did turn over his credit cards last week and, as I've previously written, Mom now has the mail go to a PO box. The next step is the removal of all car keys. I will speak to his doctor when he returns from vacation on Tuesday and let him know it's time and update him on recent events. According to the legal paperwork, I am responsible for health care stuff and Ger is in charge of the financial stuff. I am going to try to take some time off in May and go help with the clean up/out process. By then D will (hopefully) be graduated and maybe he'd like to earn a few bucks filling dumpsters and listing stuff on ebay and craigslist. Surely something of value must be in the mix. If not, my Dad has squandered the family fortune he worked for, over the last couple of years. I have always thought, jokingly, that "dying broke is perfect financial planning," but when it leaves your kids to clean up literally tons of your crap, the rules change.

In the meantime, my brother is stuck cleaning out every dilapidated house they have so they are at least "broom cleaned" and put on the market in this terrible real estate economy. But it all has to go, at a loss or not, in order to pay the outstanding bills and to support them for the rest of their lives without further accumulation of debt. It was a job he never wanted, and certainly never envisioned having to do while my parents were still alive. Like J, Ger is pretty OCD, traits that stand them both well in their jobs and lives, but which make it even more difficult for them to be around such Godawful mess.

In a train wreck sort of way, it's been fascinating reading up on all this. Addiction, compulsive shopping, hoarding, OCD, and all the other mental health issues swirling around in our family cauldron actually have some things in common too, plus I've been reading about a glucose in the brain connection. My Dad's brother is a Psychiatrist. Wouldn't he have a field day with our branch?

I'm going to go clean my room.