The Angry Typist

This will be the last post in this series as I am starting the new year fresh and its time to leave this behind.

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Having both parents gone as adults feels so peculiar. A junior high school friend had also recently lost her dad and handling his estate described it best, she said that it just felt “unmoored.”  

When Māmā first retired and was still self-mobile, driving, independent, coherent, despite my offer of retiring closer to me, she chose to retire in the south where she knew no one solely because DW’s deceased husband was from there.  Every year I continued to invite her to relocate closer to me, but she refused.

Her rationale was based on one of her former coworker who had quit her job in NYC to move near her daughter and her husband in another state. The daughter and the husband moved again, and the coworker followed them & moved to a second state. The daughter and the husband moved a third time, and the coworker was about to follow when the daughter told her not to follow them. The coworker returned to her old job and told Māmā the whole story. I was only 9 years old at the time and somehow the story resonated with Māmā and somewhere in her mind, this was our future.

She would often counter that I should move there, for my husband and I to quit our jobs, and uproot our entire family to move into the duplex next to DW – mortgage free. When I had somewhat seriously considered it, asking about logistics, like a light switch Māmā forbid me to move her furniture into storage because ‘it was her house and her things and if anyone should put their things in storage, it’s me.’  At the time the boys were 1 and 4 years old with Thing 2 still in a crib, no changing table, no child proofing but I was expected to move in ‘as is’ and stow all our belongings in storage.

I should have known that DW had already started to influence Māmā. The sudden change in Māmā’s tone, the irrational declaration of her house, her things, and the complete abandonment of reason, all had the hallmark of DW. DW had never liked to share, she enjoyed having the entire duplex to herself. It was true then and it’s true today with Daniel.

The two times I was able to visit after Māmā’s passing, I noticed a few things – some shocking.

1. Māmā never cleaned the house. Starting when I was 10, I vacuumed, dusted, scrubbed the toilets, bathtub, kitchen floor, did the laundry, trimmed the shrubs in the summer and shoveled the snow in the winter, took out the garbage, pretty much everything but the dishes. Before I walk into Māmā’s house I always must take a double dose of allergy meds so that I can breathe. The linoleum floor was sticky. Everything in the closet had congealed to the carpet. Mildew covered everything. There were so much dust and cobwebs in the corners of the rooms you would think the house was abandoned. The toilets were clogged with feces. And all the curtains were covered with years of grime. I could not understand how or why anyone would choose to live like this but then remembered that I had always done all the cleaning and this is what happened when I moved out.
2. Māmā & Daniel were outright hoarders – they kept everything. Enough empty paper coffee cups and empty glass bottles to fill an external shed. Every utility bill, every plumber, landscaper, Māmā had ever paid for the last 25 years were kept in countless USPS priority boxes. Cases and cases of garbage bags, toilet paper, cancelled stamps, and pecans. Her old bedroom was so cluttered I could not walk from one side of the bed to the other. It was an external representation of her gradual mental decline.
3. Daniel: Disabled or Coddled?
   • Social Security Agency uses a 5-step process to determine disability and the SSA determined that Daniel required a “Representative Payee” because allegedly Daniel is unable to manage or direct the management of his own benefits.
   • Typically, if a person requires a Representative Payee, they are not competent to sign legal documents. However, DW had Daniel sign a life insurance claim form (or forged his signature) and most bullied him to sign the Assent to Probate document. So, it would seem he maybe ‘disabled’ sometimes but when it’s convenient he’s competent enough to sign legal documents.
   • Daniel never had any inclination to leave the nest. And Māmā was all too keen to be his enabler, grooming Daniel to be her constant companion instead of preparing him to be an independent adult to live without her.
   • For the last 24 years, Māmā and DW withdrew themselves from the world and took Daniel with them.
   • In my end of September visit, I provided Daniel with a prepaid smartphone and enabled voice command for ease of use. He broke out in sweat trying to follow the phone’s queue to engage facial recognition. He had difficulties following the directions to turn his head this way and that. I spent almost two hours with him running him through how to use voice command to compose a text message and send, and all he could say was, “I can’t use this. This is too hard.” Daniel is not even 60-years old and he had no will or desire to learn. It was so heartbreaking.
   • Since Māmā has never given Daniel an opportunity to do anything for himself, its really a question of whether Daniel is actually disabled or just overly coddled. After over 50+ years of having everything managed for him, the simplest adult day-to-day things seem like an impossible task but I can’t make him want to learn.
4. All the things I gravitated towards were from my childhood in Hong Kong. They were the things which were meaningful to me – reminded me of when my childhood was normal, when I had a Bàba, a Māmā, and an older brother who I occasionally actually played with. It was probably the happiest times with my family which are only captured in black & white photographs.
5. My OCD for tidiness, cleanliness, anti-clutter was derived from living conditions that I subjected to growing up in NY with Māmā & Daniel. My personal rule is that if I haven’t worn something in a year, it gets donated. I donate a pair of shoes when I buy a new pair of shoes. If I haven’t used an item for over 6 months, it gets donated. When I am stressed, I clean.
6. It has already been over two months since Māmā’s passing and from time-to-time I see something at the shop and think, ‘oh Māmā would like that’ only to remember that she is gone. I will never send her another Christmas gift or birthday gift or Mother’s Day gift … ever again.
7. I am a survivor. And as agonizing and pseudo-K-pop drama the current situation is, I will survive this as I have done so many times before. It will just take time.