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Post by howardsgirlfriend on Jul 24, 2009 10:18:26 GMT -5
I'm very grateful that my mother has let go of much of her clutter, and has very little filth. She's mostly a sentimental hoarder.
I think all of us find this sort of thing more difficult when we're also dealing with family of origin issues and mortality on top of the usual distress about desqualoring. What can you do now, to plan for that event? Take notes about what techniques might be especially helpful? Ask a friend or relative to agree to help you when the time comes? Can you identify a charity that would appreciate doonations, and/or an auction house for the valuables? Start planning now, and you might put your mind at ease a bit.
My sister and I will sort Mom's stuff together, and DH will shift boxes and bring us refreshments. I feel better already.
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Post by annieblue on Jul 24, 2009 13:14:27 GMT -5
Hi HowardsGF  How very sweet & kind of you to offer suggestions to help alleviate my panic.  I am one of 4 siblings, but I am the only one still living in the home state where our mother resides. I live an hour from her house. Although I do spend a good bit of time in that city, as my older daughter & friends also live there, it will be horrific to devote who knows how long of my life to commuting & emptying that house. When I say it is floor to ceiling & wall to wall with only very narrow goat trails, I mean floor to ceiling & wall to wall with only very narrow goat trails in a 12 room house. The air quality & dust alone are so bad that I imagine hazmat suits will be needed. It truly will be a job for professionals. My 3 brothers & I will handle the funeral & a bit of early house stuff, but then they (as after my father's death) will have to go back to their lives in other states & do the best they can do to help with the oversight from afar. And there is no telling what it will cost. I have seen & read of homes in this condition that required 'round the clock management of dumpster delivery so as not to be left without one at any given time, & that is just the tip of the iceberg as far as management & expense. There is one very close family friend ( my age; he was one of my brother's best friends through school & is now more-or-less family) who has been invested for a very long time in trying to help my mother get OUT of the mindset of her squalor & begin to remove some of the stuff NOW, rather than leaving it all to the rest of us. He & I, combined, have made absolutely no headway in this. My mother's bottom line: "You all can do with it what you want after I am gone, & most of it can go to help others." She & I discuss it rather regularly & I have let her know it is just not true that any of it will go to help others, it is a flat out LIE for her to keep thinking it. I also let her know it is so very wrong to leave this to her children to deal with. Because of her illness, & it is serious illness in her case, she is in total denial that there is anything amiss in her thinking. She is an artist & has convinced herself that living as she does is just an 'alternative lifestyle' that none of us understand, & lots of people are eccentric & 'special' & the world should just leave them all the hell alone. O-k-a-y. And for the most part, the world 'does' leave her alone. Her family, however, does continue to try to have some sorts of relationships with her, even though she continues to block that by using the house to keep people away & using her work-work-work to never make time to spend with others. I know there was a long process by someone at Squalor Survivors who dealt with these issues with her mother. At some point I recall the mother buying a different house or two in addition to the original one & those new ones filled right up too. I see that coming down the pike with my mother as well. She already owns 3 houses, but one is a rental for income & another is empty & she is 'working on' getting it fixed up a bit to sell. She then intends for that profit to go toward the purchase of a new home for herself & then selling her present home to finish paying off the new home. Um. Not gonna happen. I know she will end up with 2 houses for living & the 1 rental, because after moving into the new home, she will completely abandon any desqualoring & emptying of the current home. I know this because she is a 'plow forward & never look back to deal with any of her messes' kind of person. Yes, the stakes continue to be upped , therefore my anxiety continues to grow. My husband & I have offered hundreds of times to help her get the 'go away' stuff out NOW. We have a truck & she 'does' acknowledge there are things that do need to go. The rub is she has all the doorways blocked to where nothing can be taken out & she passionately delays clearing those doorways. At this time we have a brand new television we would like her to have, but she has 8 non-working televisions in the house & bought a new one (a teeny tiny one) rather than clear a doorway in order to have the new one brought in. Last year my brothers & I purchased a new refrigerator for her so the 3 non-working ones could come out. It was a long process to get the new one in & she would not relinquish the non-working ones. She is very much in need of helps like that regarding appliances & getting her furnace in working order, & we want very much to do those things, but she makes it nearly impossible for any of those things to happen. I don't even know at this point how many years she has gone without heat or air-conditioning. None of this, including the air quality from decades of accumulated dust, mold, mice, etc., is helping her health. It is hard, just very hard. I didn't really mean to spill all this out. It is the most I have said of this situation at any one time since my coming to S.O.S. I've not wanted to say very much at all, because of sensitivity to those who are currently 'in' this type of squalor, as in this case I am an outsider looking into my mother's life which isn't the purpose of our site. But . . . but . . . but it is making my own desqualoring process almost unbearable. I say I am taking my time & going at my own pace on my place, but inside I feel a tremendous sense of urgency to get every bit of it done in the hope that I might have a bit of a breather between doing my house & doing hers. My biggest fear is there will be no breather to live & enjoy my own work before hers is front & center & must be done. I have chosen to clear, clean, & reclaim my home. I have chosen this for myself & my family. I do not want any of them to ever feel what I feel in this situation. I especially do not want them to feel so unimportant to me that they can't even come to my home. Only 2 of my mother's 14 grandchildren & great-grandchildren have been inside her home. I just cannot do that to my own. Yet I don't know that I have the time to enjoy all of my efforts due to being then full-up with responsibility for handling hers. I grew up in squalor (it just wasn't as bad at the house as it is now,) & I have spent much of my adult life trying to keep OUT of it, yet here I am seeing it coming down the road to find me & in a much bigger way than ever before. Anyway, that's a bit of my reality. Any further suggestions are welcomed & appreciated. Off & on I have considered starting a thread to address just this matter, but here I am. 
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Post by howardsgirlfriend on Jul 24, 2009 15:17:14 GMT -5
It's sooo hard.
Be assured that even if you do not have a "breathing period," the skills you're acquiring during your own desqualoring will help when the time comes.
Since your mom has already expressed her desire to leave her squalor to you "to help others," maybe you can start planning right where she is at the moment.
For instance, the two of you could identify a charity that "helps others" that might want her squalor. You could obtain estimates of how much it would cost to move all the squalor, or whether this charity would come pick it up. If they would pick it up, maybe further along in this process, your mom might consent to someone from the charity taking a look at her squalor.
Your mom has already made it clear that your own distress about this matter does not motivate her at all, but her desire "to help others" motivates her a little. Keep yours eyes open for other things that motivate her.
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Post by annieblue on Jul 24, 2009 23:26:18 GMT -5
THANK YOU, HGF, for being a voice of reason, wisdom, & c-a-l-m.Prior to posting my wordy post, above, it had crossed my mind that her house will be easier than mine, at least as far as decision-making goes, because the vast majority of it is obvious junk to which I have no personal history or attachment. However, I know there are some things buried amidst it all that I would want to keep - personal belongings & mementos from both she & my father, as well as other family items that have been passed down to each of them. It is tempting for me to think I could just get people in there to pitch all of it, but that would mean losing those items forever. In order to avoid the time it would take to sift through tons & tons of junk, I might have to face the reality of just letting every one of those keepables go. As for starting where she is at the moment & working on the items she has acknowledged could go away, my eldest brother had suggested the same awhile back, especially the part about identifying a charity to which she would be comfortable sending things. His idea, though, was to load up the truck one visit at a time & then haul it all off to the dump without telling her. Um. The glitch in her actually following through on donating items is a large portion of her stuff came from donation shops to begin with & she is adamant about wanting to dole those things out personally to people she knows who could use them, except she never does. Most of the items she has earmarked for my husband & I to be involved with removing are large things - appliances, beds, etc., & this is where we have been focusing our attentions. But then there is the matter of the blocked doorways to keep us from doing exactly that. I know this sounds like lots of "buts" & no movement in the process, but I am experiencing a number of bright spots since this conversation began. First, you have helped me think about it, & more than that you have helped me think about it in proactive & creative ways. This alone has made me feel better for the first time in a very long while. Next, you affirmed that my own desqualoring skills will come into play & will be put to good use when the time comes. I was not always hoardy & squalory, I was an 'active' perfectionist & I was an expert at getting rid of stuff FAST,  . After beginning my own dedicated home-reclaiming, a good bit of that skill has come back to me. I do not have much problem at all with just DUMPING IT OUT, even if it is good stuff for which I once had plans & to which I was once attached. The sheer volume involved at my mother's place is what keeps dragging me down when I start feeling positive on that particular note. I really-really-really like the idea of determining the financial cost of removing the squalor. That could seriously appeal to my mother's motivation to 'save money' for other people by providing them with free things. In this case, however, it would be a matter of her releasing stuff now in order to save her children the expense of taking care of all of this after she is gone. And the idea of having someone from a charity come in to look things over just might go a little way toward her realizing the error of thinking these items will be accepted as donations. Yes, I will definitely be keeping my eyes open for new things that motivate her. What a priceless suggestion from you & a priceless realization for me. Again, THANK YOU. Without people like you here at S.O.S. I would already have gone mad 10 times over!
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Post by annieblue on Jul 24, 2009 23:33:35 GMT -5
SerenityNow,Thank you so much for starting this thread to address your nightmares & other issues. If you had not done so when you felt the desire to do so, I would still be completely awash in panic regarding my mother's house looming on the horizon. The detour from the original topic is regrettable, I apologize, but at the same time it has been to the good due to your choice to make that original post. THANKS!!! 
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Post by yearning4order on Jul 25, 2009 2:51:55 GMT -5
"It is the most I have said of this situation at any one time since my coming to S.O.S. I've not wanted to say very much at all, because of sensitivity to those who are currently 'in' this type of squalor, as in this case I am an outsider looking into my mother's life which isn't the purpose of our site. But . . . but . . . but it is making my own desqualoring process almost unbearable. I say I am taking my time & going at my own pace on my place, but inside I feel a tremendous sense of urgency to get every bit of it done in the hope that I might have a bit of a breather between doing my house & doing hers. My biggest fear is there will be no breather to live & enjoy my own work before hers is front & center & must be done. I have chosen to clear, clean, & reclaim my home. I have chosen this for myself & my family. I do not want any of them to ever feel what I feel in this situation. I especially do not want them to feel so unimportant to me that they can't even come to my home. Only 2 of my mother's 14 grandchildren & great-grandchildren have been inside her home. I just cannot do that to my own. Yet I don't know that I have the time to enjoy all of my efforts due to being then full-up with responsibility for handling hers. I grew up in squalor (it just wasn't as bad at the house as it is now,) & I have spent much of my adult life trying to keep OUT of it, yet here I am seeing it coming down the road to find me & in a much bigger way than ever before."
Hugs, hugs, hugs, you are very brave and thoughtful.
I have no suggestions, as there is a part of me that would want to say "Look, I'd like to be as sensitive as you are asking me to be, but the reality is that when you pass I am the family member who will be here when all is said and done and this will fall to me. I love you, I know the squalor struggle all to well. But there is also this other piece that what you leave I will have to deal with."
I honestly don't have good ideas in this area. I can remember my ex asking if he could clean my office and I always said no--but the key was that I felt judged and he made decisions that demonstrated he did not know me well.
For instance, I used to have many great bootlegged concert cassettes, and one year, when there were a series of semi-interesting interviews on a local radio station he took my cassettes without asking and recorded over them. Even past the first "oops" mistake, if he did my laundry, he would inevitably put reds in with whites and ruin my clothing. It became this bizarre nightmare of not trusting him to help me with things because he would ruin my things, and yet I myself had the whole hoard & squalor thing going.
Anyway--I'm wondering if any part of her struggle is worrying about decisions that will be made or how her things will be treated?
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Post by serenitynow on Jul 25, 2009 7:21:06 GMT -5
SerenityNow,Thank you so much for starting this thread to address your nightmares & other issues. If you had not done so when you felt the desire to do so, I would still be completely awash in panic regarding my mother's house looming on the horizon. The detour from the original topic is regrettable, I apologize, but at the same time it has been to the good due to your choice to make that original post. THANKS!!!  Were all in this together, friend. |
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Post by chakraverte on Jul 26, 2009 3:42:32 GMT -5
ditto to above post.
Looking at my hand seems to help me realize it is a dream, as does looking for a mirror.
Other things I've tried in dreams -- turning lights on and off, trying to do math. Writing journals about the nightmare, and then rewriting the story helps. Even just thinking about where in the dream you started to get the idea that it was just a dream helps look for clues earlier the next time you dream. Therapy helps.
Lately, when a dream heads in a direction that I don't like, I look for a subway stop. I live on the L-line in Brooklyn, and no matter where I am in dreamworld, I find my subway stop and get on it towards home. Mind you, that only started happening this week. And it's 4:40 am my time. I woke up from a nightmare (having found my way out on the subway) and I can't fall back asleep. I even took my prescribed sleep stuff. Sigh.
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Post by gettingsomewhere on Jul 27, 2009 0:11:17 GMT -5
So much to say here AnnieBlue. Will come back sometime soon when words come clearly. But until then just wanted to let you know how very brave you are. I am amazed at all you have managed.
hugs, chez x
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sarthbur
New Member
Joined: August 2008
Posts: 34
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Post by sarthbur on Jul 27, 2009 1:46:12 GMT -5
I am late to this conversation but can relate to the nightmares so much. I've never had the screaming fits, but I will have the same horrible nightmare over and over and over (with some variations) for a month or so. Then I'll be fine for awhile, until the next one hits. They most certainly are triggered by dealing with squalor and all the feelings associated with it and dealing with family and all the muck that lies under the surface there. I've had many nightmares while planning my wedding. (mostly planning the wedding has been good though!  ) I like the tips to help yourself not have the nightmares. It never occured to me to be proactive about having them! |
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sarthbur
New Member
Joined: August 2008
Posts: 34
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Post by sarthbur on Jul 27, 2009 1:47:08 GMT -5
ps--i love the name serenitynow
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