hoarding part 4. 

      this is a family photo taken at thanksgiving in what year i dont know , but it was a while ago no doubt as a lot has changed since that day. mom , dad, and grandma occupy the front row. sisters sherry,  charly  (belinda), and brother  mike who has also passed is in second row. third row includes myself, jr ( denzil malott jr.),jim and faw davis . the only one missing was my sister jeanie. this is as close to a family portrait as i believe we have ever came to. as it seems as if someone was always missing. we used to rent the sandyville town hall to accommodate the whole family at the time. grandpa had passed quite a few years ago at this time. 

      as i had mentioned earlier that grandma had began to become more reclusive as she became older . i had moved back to her farm and was living in the trailer beside her house. i would see her often during those times and talk to her , and see if she needed anything. as well my aunt fran would visit daily bringing her food and clean clothes as grandma had found  it hard to wash clothes at this point. 

      at this point the inner sanctum was off limits to all but aunt fran as she was not to keen to let you see what went on beyond the living room doors. but a look at her once pristine living room was a good indication of what was going on behind closed doors. out of room for any more of her stuff , it had now overflowed into the living room , first filling up one corner then the next until it spilled off the coffee table and eventually all that was left was a path from the kitchen to an orange chair she would invite you to sit in while she sat on a stool , because everything else was piled up. a small 4 foot by 4 foot area with encroaching papers looking as if to bury you at any time would surround you as you sat there watching grandma in her frailty climb over magazines that had shifted into her path to negotiate sitting on a stool. 

     i would ask her how she had been and always got a 'not a bit good.' but she had been not a bit good for over 60 years of her life at that time . it was her typical response leading into a rant about the depression coming and how we need to prepare as she read it in the papers. hard times were a coming, and sadly grandma had parted this earth always prepared for the hard times a coming but never did she have it nearly as hard as when she was a kid. she would dab at the corners of her mouth and go on about something or other she had read in the paper and we would eventually get around to talking about how hard she had it with all the papers and stuff around her. 

    one day i suggested to her to do something about it and she came back with this idea of moving an old school bus that dad and mom had bought and was at the other farm down to her farm and attach it to the front of her house . as she need more space. i asked her why she needed more space , and then i began to see that the stuff she was saving was more important to her than her own health and welfare. she had to much stuff and not enough places to put it. everything was piled full and she needed more piling space. the idea of attaching this monstrosity of a bus to the side of the house abhorred me. she was taking a perfectly good house and slumming it for a chance to store more stuff. this bus wasn't so pretty when it was used as an rv. let alone stuck to the front of the house.it was also in disrepair and i knew it so i told her it couldn't be fixed and that it would cost her more money to move it down there than it would to build her a building to put her stuff in.  she didn't believe me. so off we went to the other farm to see for herself the sad state the bus was in. i was trying to persuade her to deal with the stuff she had rather than accommodate more.

     her thinking was she had bought and paid for this rv-bus and that if there was anyway she could  do it, she would move the bus down there and attach it to the front room of the house and make a way to use it as part of her house. she couldn't see that the simple solution was to get rid of a lot of stuff , papers mail ,this and that that cluttered her life. instead she wanted to complicate it more. she wasn't about to part with anything she had accumulated for whatever reason. this bus was one of those possessions she couldn't part with and never forgot. so to call her bluff off we went to the other farm . her frail body needing helped into my pickup for a visit to the other farm to check on the bus in its dilapidated condition. she had been very few places , refusing to attend family functions and this and that and rarely visiting the doctor , but me telling her there was no way this was going to work fired her up as she knew better. wild horses couldn't have kept her from seeing that bus that day. 

        at that time i had not been to this farm for awhile as my brother jr was living there. and mom and dad were in new mexico still , but i had heard that the bus roof was leaking and that it was just used as storage. well when we arrived at the farm grandma saw for herself a dilapidated old school bus with a rv body sitting on it and it was i was told . the roof was falling down and it had pipes and other stuff strewn across the floor and smelled musty as it had been closed for awhile trapping all the rot inside.grandma who rarely attempted to climb anything and determined to see for herself climbed right up into the bus and looked in dismay as she knew finally i was right about this not being fit to live in . let alone the fact it still had to be moved to the other place. a tow bill of another 1000 could be expected plus materials to fix the roof. she finally realized it was hopeless and we returned to the farm . i proposed a couple of more ideas at this time to help- solve her problems. i really didn't want my grandma to be living this way and the rest of the family also realized that this wasn't safe for her any longer as her house was quickly becoming a fire trap. she listened to very little at this point regarding getting rid of anything and instead knew she was right in all she did . i think maybe that if she rid herself of those possessions she was losing a bit of herself and refused to hear of it. 

       depressed as she was ,  i let her stew about the bus thing for a few days till it was no longer an issue. at this point she moved on to my next suggestion. although brevity in describing my grandma s obsession with her things is something i desire the story has taken longer than i originally thought to fully describe and hope that you will bear with me for one maybe 2 more days as i finally tell all i need to say about this story.