I walked out of my childhood home for the last time today...Honest relief , a sense of freedom.... Cleaning out that home was tough....Accepting that your father lived in conditions that most would consider deplorable. Really heartbreaking. I did not have the emotional response to my childhood home I expected. I think those tears happened long before now and I had moved on, I just didn't realize it.
Driving into Yorba Linda, I didn't recognize any of it until we were two turns from my house. Street names the only thing that had not changed....My neighbourhood was much, much nicer than I remember, Dad's house was not....
Nothing had changed, same fixtures and flooring from forty years ago, even the yellow and green light switch with the doll on it, from our room as little girls, was still in place. Not a single piece of furniture had even moved in more than 25 years. I think life on the inside of that place had simply stopped...It's not my job to figure out why.
Light bulbs, faucets, toilets, appliances were used until they broke and then that convince was just set aside and forgotten about. Dad did dishes, threw out garbage ( just food wrappers really), washed his clothes and took care of his car, but that was it. He fixed and cleaned nothing beyond that.
Mice had over run his house when he lived there, when we raised concern, he had told us, he liked them, I think he thought of them as pets....their evidence was everywhere now. Twenty five years of dust, dirt and grim also covered every surface and darkened every window and wall. Cob webs where everywhere ....The filth was overwhelming.
105 degrees F (41 C ) heat (thanks Cali, for reminding me why I could never live here again) gave us the complete hellish experience .....
Armed with gloves, masks and garbage bags, a Goliath shop vac and a 30 yard dumpster...we begin a full day of the Merrill version of "hot yoga"....
I waffled between complete sorrow and pity to anger and frustration...Bottom line, he didn't have to live like this...but for the most part chose to. And now, for the second time, the Merrill twins were cleaning out a parent's home, this time on our birthday....
It was hot, disgusting work , but the filth made the decisions easy...dumpster it is. We filled the 30 yard bad boy twice in less than six hours. The clean out was very much "putting lipstick on a corpse" we weren't fooling any one. My parents wrecked their house....
After 40 years of their accumulating, Kelli and I savaged very little....stuff packed in 8 x 8 x 5 feet of a moving truck and me two small u haul boxes and a conga drum...
The complete time at the house....9 hours Monday , 4 hours Tuesday and 4 hours today....
The fact that we finished so quickly just one of a multitude of tender mercies this week....
Maybe it will hit me later. But for now it's time to say goodbye to Hillock View Plaza....
And time to move forward.
Your writing is poingnant and moving. Thank you for sharing.
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