RouletteWeekend

My brother in law, B, died and now I live in Knoxville again.

This is probably going to be a long one to get you all caught up. If you’ve been around for a while, you were probably aware that Will’s brother came to live with us for a bit in 2019. We found him near death in his apartment, green from a failing liver. After he got out of the hospital he lived with us for a few months, I think, then COVID hit and he moved in with his parents.

Fast forward two years, Will and I move to Myrtle Beach where we have been living our best life while his family was pretty miserable dealing with sickness and death. His dad died about a year after we moved, we came back for the funeral but quickly and selfishly returned to the beach. Will’s brother was a product of the New American Story. He got injured while working at his very important job and making a very impressive living. He suffered an injury that required pain medication and over time, the pain pills evolved into drug seeking and before too long, he was a full blow addict of the typical kind. Unable to take care of himself, manipulating his parents and unable to be the father or husband his kids and wife deserved. I didn’t know him when he was at his best. I only met him after his unfortunate downfall. So I didn’t have the sympathy or empathy that those who loved him did and I do kind of blame myself for being so harsh about all of it and encouraging Will to stay away from all the toxicity. I mean, after all, by the time B died, Will and I had been alcohol free for nearly 7 years and the last thing I wanted was for something to happen that made him feel like drinking again was OK.

Again, those of you who have been around this blog for a while remember what a shit show that part of my life was so I won’t re-hash it here, you just have to go back to the blogs of January 2018-January 2020 to get ALL caught up if you want the scoop.

So we stayed away from Knoxville and I avoided it like the plague whenever anything happened with Will’s family. Both of Will’s parents love their kids so much that they would have bailed them out of any situation, probably even murder so they refused to let B hit rock bottom. They refused to kick him out. They refused the not knowing that some people choose when the ones they love become addicts and so, he was able to stay in their home over the last five years and they loved him the best they knew how. I was angry at him for most of those years for putting his parents through all of that and the few times that Will’s mom called to say that his brother was definitely dying this time, I never came to Knoxville with him. Like I said, I didn’t have the patience or the empathy for this particular situation. Which also kept me in the dark about how difficult the situation was. Fast forward to last month, Will gets the call mid afternoon on Christmas Eve that his brother has actually died. He had been on hospice about 4 times, but he was very stubborn and we honestly thought he would outlive us even in his sickness, but he eventually succumbed to his organ failure and his addiction. It’s hard to say which one actually won out.

He left behind a grieving family and a path of destruction like I had never seen before. Will came immediately. I was not planning on coming. Not for any reason, not even for the funeral, because that was how harsh my feelings toward this man were. Not because he was a drug addict. Not even because he took advantage of his parents. Not because he was a crappy brother who told all the lies he could think of about his big brother. It was because I have never been able to wrap my brain around how any person who has children, how any parent, can continue to choose a path that hurts their kids. I guess it’s a little easier when you know your kids have a strong, intelligent and capable other parent to take care of them, but to me, it’s unforgivable. And even though it’s not like they were my kids, or even my blood for that matter, I was always so mad for his kids that he kept making the wrong choice when over and over again, there were solutions put in front of him to make a better choice. And yes, I am saying this as someone who has never done a hard drug in her life, so I do have the luxury of sitting blindly atop my high horse and judging, but I also know that in the 26 years that I spent raising my kids as a single parent, I had many an opportunity to do all the drugs that lead to that lonely path of addiction and every single time I said no, it was not because I thought I was too good to do drugs, it was because I was always so worried that my kids would have to live their lives without me and without each other if I was not in the picture. And that single fact kept me from ever taking the fork in the road that led to a plate of drugs. And, I’ve always been proud of that fact and, admittedly, used my own moral and parental compass as a gauge to freely judge those who didn’t make the same choice I made. I know this is a character flaw of mine and I readily admit it, though it doesn’t change my feelings about the subject above.

So I was relieved when Will got the call. His brother was done suffering. But more importantly, he was done causing daily suffering to those who loved him and especially to his mom who was tasked with taking care of him by herself for the last 3 years.

So on Christmas Eve, Will got in his car and drove to Knoxville. By Christmas morning, I was on my way with two dogs in my car to help clean up the wreckage that was left behind and it was extensive. I’m not sure if I can put into words what the house looked like. The house that his parent’s had worked so hard for and had decorated so meticulously to hold family history, American history, and memories of before the family was shattered.

The house was in complete disarray and Will was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer volume of trash in the house. As soon as I got there, we set to work cleaning as fast and furiously as possible. His mother was in a fog of grief and disbelief, I think. She just stayed in bed. We moved the couch that B died on out of the living room. We started bagging up all the trash: old fast food bags from the fridge, soda bottles, cigarette butts, and nitrous oxide containers. In the end, I think that’s what ultimately got him. He huffed himself to death. And that’s a whole other angry story called “Why the fuck are vape stores allowed to sell 3.3L containers of a gas labeled for ‘food prep’ only and why is there no limit on how many one single person can buy?” Because we currently have dozens of empty containers in the garage and no way to dispose of them or at least not one that we have figured out yet.

For three days we cleaned from the time we got up until we fell into bed each night. On day 3, we filled a 10 foot U-haul truck with the couch, his bed from upstairs, and no less than 80 garbage bags and took it all to the dump. The guys behind us were pissed that they picked the wrong line to get into, but in our defense, we were DRIVING A U-HAUL!!! They should have assumed that we were going to be there a while. Oh, and we had cardboard boxes, dozens of them from medical equipment and medical supplies that had been delivered over the years. Some of those boxes even contained bodily fluid from when the nurses had to come drain his stomach of all the fluid sitting on it. Why was it not properly disposed of, you ask? Great fucking question. Why did the hospice nurses not call someone when they walked into the house and it looked like a trash bin? Another great fucking question. This was definitely one of those situations where you think of all the people who should have, at the very least, called Will to say, “hey, your mom could use your help.” But would it have mattered? We were both trying so hard to stay out of the situation because it was so toxic, and we saw just how toxic it was when we got here to clean. Physically and mentally toxic.

So we cleaned. We took Will’s mom to the doctor to be checked out and we went home. Before we got to the South Carolina state line, we had decided that Will’s mom could not live by herself. It was all too much and it had taken it’s toll on her physically and emotionally. Her memory seemed to take the brunt of it all and she didn’t really know what day it was or what was happening. She’s only 75 so it’s hard to tell if that’s a permanent or temporary problem, but either way, it was a problem that we couldn’t ignore. So by January 4th, we had given our 30 day notice to our landlord and had started packing up our house and on Will’s birthday, January 21st, we had loaded up the last of our belongings and were heading back to Knoxville to move in with his mom and help her.

So we’ve been here for 6 days now as Knoxvillians again and there’s an overwhelming amount of stuff to be done. We currently have our things in two storage units. We had to tear out the carpet upstairs in the bedroom that will eventually be ours, the hallway, and the stairs. We’ve steam cleaned most of the kitchen and most of the upstairs bathroom. We’ve unpacked approximately 10 boxes of our own and the garage is still filled with things we need to take to the dump.

Will’s mom has an obscene amount of linens. I’ve never seen so many holiday tablecloths in my life. And quilts. So…many…quilts, I could start an Etsy store. So I am washing, folding, organizing and trying to find a place to store all of the things that at one time were so very important to this woman is now just trying to get through the day. She seems grateful that we are here, but she’s sad and I know that is normal. I just hope she bounces back and gets back to doing the things she used to love doing like sewing and going to lunch with her friends.

And I hope that I will eventually come to the end of the laundry pile.

I think that’s all I have for today, but like I’ve said a million times before, I’m going to try to be more consistent in writing and if you’ve ever dealt with a parent with memory loss, I’d love any advice about how to make daily living less stressful for her.

See you on the flip side.