Friday, October 12, 2012

Getting to work.

We made our first visit to my mom's trailer today. We were warned by the Detective that responded when she was found, that it was a bit messy, but that he had seen worse. The trailer was pretty bad, but as sad as it sounds...as bad as it was, for her, was not that bad. I had expected worse actually.

This 33 foot trailer on a mobile resport park has been her home for the last 7 years I guess. She had owned a double wide before but it got destroyed in a hurrican. She bought this with the insurance money. Not sure why she wanted to go smaller but that is what she did.
I am not sure how much of the furniture jumble you see here is her doing or the EMT's/Coroner's who responded.
As you can see she couldn't keep the clutter under control too well. What you can't see is the layer of dust about an inch thick on everything.
The other things you can't see are all the fucking roaches. I don't think I had ever seen one in person before...they grossed me out so much. I know to a degree that just happens in Florida, but we bombed 3 times and ended up with a death toll of close to 40...and only 1/4 of those were small ones. Damn it mom, why the hell would you live like this?!. Going through her house, dealing with the dirt and bugs I kept going from feeling so sad for her and feeling so angry at her. I mean who the heck would pick living like this over your kids?
There was not a clean spot in the entire house, much less a whole clean room. And boy could she cram all kinds of stuff in that 33 feet of space. We easily threw out 40 big trash bags of crap, clothes, trash etc.
I did run into some things I remember from when I was a kid.
She even had her storage shed pretty well packed as well.
Her van.
There were cute little lizards everywhere. Pretty funny how I draw the line...lizards cute, roaches NOT.
Jericho was not allowed inside, it was just too dirty and cramped in there. He is going to make it a little difficult to get things done.

















We stopped for lunch, Jason and I both scrubbed down before eating.
This is not a look of happy on my face is it LOL.
After lunch we got back to work. We were also greeted by the detective who I had been talking with since finding out. A small group of my mom's church friends also came by. They helped us load up the bigger stuff to throw away and hauled it off for us.

















Mr. Man got put on lock down while we were working hard. He was amazingly good...almost like he knew he just had to chill and let us work.

















We are so thankful for the help from her church friends, we would have had a hard time to get as far as we did without it. It's been a dirty job so far. I am so very glad Jason was able to come with me...I don't know that I could have handled all this without him. He keeps me on track when I get off a little, he keeps me going when the job looks too big and I don't know where to start. I think that was part of my mom's problem too. I think once things get so messy or so bad you just get overwhelmed and don't know where to start even though you would love to clean up. I'm sure it is similar with hoarders too.
First load hauled away...lots more to go.
When we were done for the day, mom's church friends asked us to come to a get together. There were about 12 people, snacks...which Jericho loved, and lots of questions. Most of them had known mom for years but never knew she had kids, or how many kids or that we didn't talk in the last 17 years. They were all quite shocked and sad to hear how things had been...and that she died without getting to patch things up. They did tell me about her history of depression and some other heath issues, so I got to learn some things I didn't know too. They said she was up and down with her depression and it would go in cycles. She had actually retreated from everyone over the last couple of years, only seeing a few of her friends. It is so sad...and just didn't need to go the way it did.

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