Airing some dirty laundry...

I think I have a few minutes that I can use to write this up, but I'll warn in advance that I may run a little long so please be patient in reading here.

First up, let me start with something other than what will probably become the main focus of this article.  My thoughts are a bit elsewhere today as I think about my Aunt who is apparently losing her fight against breast cancer.  This is her second time putting up the fight and while she won a reprieve of approximately 10 years (actually 11 years now) after the first battle, this time things don't seem to be going as well.   She's lived a relatively reasonable life span, though I know this last year has been rough for her given the return of the cancer and the hell of taking treatment for it.  She so badly (or apparently so) wants to stick around to help guide her grandkids through their early life and see that they get on a good path as they enter adulthood.  Given their father and his own demons and bad habits, in many ways it's amazing that they seem to be as well grounded as they are, but again I think that says a lot about how hard my Aunt (who is also my godmother) has worked, along with my Uncle, on keeping those kids on track.

I sincerely hope that I don't have to make a trip to a funeral in the future, though I can't say I'm not prepared for it and wouldn't be expecting it.  I know the whole situation is tearing my mother up as she and her sister were close, even if they were separated by thousands of miles geographically.

With that said, here comes something I hinted at a few days (or a few articles) ago... a little dirty laundry.  No, not the attacks on another individual type dirty laundry.  Sorry to disappoint you if you are reading here and thinking I'm about to spill some secrets about another JU member (or another member of whatever forums you happen to be reading this on).  While I might mention another member in a bit, I'm not here to gossip about others, but instead am here to talk about myself and/or my own family a bit.

Generally speaking, I'm a pretty private individual and I don't tend to give out too many personal details here or elsewhere on the net.  While I've shared some information about family pets, perhaps information on a vacation trip, or some general discussion about family members, you'd likely have noticed that the genuine details are sparce.  I don't want to give up that much personal information, especially not about my children, myself, and my family.  They may give up some of their own information, but that's for them to do, not for me and even then I'd highly recommend against sharing too many personal details for fear of aiding someone in identity theft.

Here's the time that I provide a bit more detail, though again in general terms....

Back when my wife was killed due to a careless driver, my home was visited by local police officers that were tasked with the horrible chore of telling me that my wife had just been killed.  They came to my home, looking for me or other family members, but primarily looking for me, so they could pass the news to me as gently as possible.  When they arrived I was still away from the home having gone to the grocery store to buy supplies for making lunch and dinner and having stopped to grab my daily caffiene fix from $tarbuck$.  They had apparently gotten to my home about 5 - 10 minutes before I got there having returned from the trip to the stores.

When I saw the police cars they were parked on either end of the car that my son had been driving, partially blocking my driveway.  I had no idea what they were there for, but I assumed that it was scold us for having the vehicle parked on the sidewalk (partially on the sidewalk, partially on the roadway) in front of my home.  We live in a mobile home community (trailer park) and while we had enough room to park the 3 vehicles that we have/use, we were or would be constantly juggling the spaces enough that we had opted to have our son park on the street in that manner so we could each have easy access to the roadway.  Later, the managers of the community wound up scolding all residents about street parking as they were concerned about the passage of emergency vehicles which need more room than our tight little roadways would otherwise allow for, but we'd not gotten to that point at the time the officers were there.

I assumed that the officers were going to ticket us or scold us for parking in the streets in that manner and/or that my son may have done something (hit and run or other issues that he may not have told me about) that had the officers there.  As I went in the house and fussed at my son about why were there police cars in front of our home he came out of his room and talked to me to say he had no idea.  About that time there was a knock on the door and the officers asked if they could enter the home.

Now I'm not one to say no to a reasonable request from a police officer.  Generally speaking I think that's a bad idea, but I originally told the officers that I didn't have much room to come inside as the home was a mess (hey, I'm getting to the meat of the issue here, so bear with me...)  They persisted and insisted that it would be best to talk inside so I allowed them in the home and again apologized for how cluttered the home was.

I'm sure when the officers entered the home they weren't prepared to see the clutter they witnessed.  You see, in addition to the concerns about the officers perhaps wanting to scold us over the parking of the car, my family had been concerned for a while that someone might someday call CPS or a similar organization to complain about the safety of our home.  Perhaps you see where I'm going to here.  If you've seen an episode of the show Hoarders: Buried Alive, or something similar, then you might have an idea of what things were like in our home.

I recall another member of this community that took advantage of the hospitality of another member's family when his own family was in need of a place to stay.  Later the dirty laundry about that individual aired with several people slamming that member over the condition that he and his family had left the property in when they moved out (or were perhaps evicted).  It wasn't a pretty sight, but regardless, I didn't say much about the situation.  Partly because I considered the individual something of a friend, and partly because I could easily empathize with the situation and how he and his family may have been living.

Let me be very clear -- I am a bit of a hoarder myself, especially digital hoarding, and hoarding of technological gadgets and such.  I would set aside computer related parts and such, software boxes and manuals, books related to computing and the like, and I'd also keep copies of mail messages and electronic documentation for years on end.  I still have much of the material that I've written and produced in previous jobs, e-mail messages from people I may not have spoken with in years, and other similar things.  For the most part though, the stuff that I keep had was kept fairly neatly organized and wasn't close to being the material that was cluttering our home.

The real problem had been my wife, and my kids.  Mostly my wife.  May she rest in peace, as much as I loved her, I tolerated her quirks and put up with the hoarding that she had done over the last many years.  She had let things get bad during the 90's to the point that when we went away to have me working on a job at a customer site for several months in the late 90's her parents came to our home and spent literally weeks cleaning the home.  She was furious, and I must admit that I was not terribly happy either.  It was a gross invasion of privacy, but looking back, it was so very necessary.  For a while after that the home stayed fairly well organized, but still, over time, my wife collected to the point of clutter everywhere.

The last many years (decade or so) were time that my wife returned to previous bad habits, and sadly allowed and/or "taught" my daughter some of those same bad habits.  Our home definitely became something you would have seen on Hoarders.  It has taken most of the last many (9 or so) months to get the home to be fairly respectable inside.  My daughter's room is still a certifiable wreck, and I continue to press on her to get it cleaned up and organized lest I have someone come in the home to clean it for her (she is adamant that she doesn't want that).  She also continues to have bad habits of leaving clutter and dirt behind herself in the common areas of the home.  I will not stand for it, won't allow it, and will be working on getting her to a therapist that can hopefully help her in seeing the problem with how she is currently behaving.

Our home needs a lot of continued work to repair some things that were neglected over the last several years.  Somewhat because of co$t of doing the repairs and upgrades, and also because in many cases I couldn't even begin to get to areas that needed work because of the clutter.  Yes, it was that bad.

Things have improved quite a bit over the last many months as I've gotten rid of piles of clothing (hers, as in my wife's, and mine that wasn't needed, along with some from my kids), and a lot of other items that weren't needed.  Boxes of books that were carted off for donation (my wife collected those, though I had many of my own that have also been donated away).  Computer materials (books, manuals, etc.) and such that were also not needed, etc.  A large collection of Tupperware and other similar products, old pots and pans and other cookware that was not needed, and more.

Some people might think that I'm working to erase my wife's presence from the home but that isn't true.  Admittedly, as I clear the piles of clutter away, I do think about how little things in the piles remind me of her, and I still have a large amount of notebooks, journals and paperwork that I'm going through over and over again and can't quite figure out what to do with it all.  The next several months will find me cleaning away more and more of it.  Shredding stuff that has personal information on it, perhaps filing a little away as needed, or just plain throwing out stuff that is just not needed at all.

Thanks to what seems to be the beginning of the end in coming to a settlement with the insurance company of the tow truck driver that killed my wife, we will hopefully have some funds soon that will go towards more remodeling and such in the home.  Upgrades where needed to take care of important things.  Over time, we will get to what others would definitely consider normal.  I guarantee that.

If you've read all of this, then I salute you.  If you care to comment, please do.