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Things That Shouldn’t Have Happened

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My father: Good God!

I look at his life and think of it as tragedy. Truly heart-breaking tragedy.

  • His mother going off the deep end
  • His bigotry: given that THEY WEREN’T WHITE!
  • That he dropped out of school
  • My mother, the love of his life, killing herself with tobacco
  • Me thinking that I was better than him: what a little twit!!
  • Why didn’t he go to work for Metzgers Dairy in Texas, as his brother did? The brother became an executive with that outfit.
  • Actually, he did have a delivery route for them, when he was a young pup. Why didn’t he get further?
  • Apparently, it was spending hours watching the rear ends of horses as he delivered milk around the countrified environs of Ft. Worth, then a hick town in the middle of nowhere.
  • So, it was off to join the Navy!
  • And from there, to move on to the Merchant Marine.
  • Why did he dislike queers…uhm, gay men…so much…but also enjoy the company of teenaged boys to a surprising degree? What WAS he trying to say to us? Or…to not say?

Every glance at the man’s life brings up a slew of questions. But…isn’t that so of everyone?

Possibly he and my mother shouldn’t have moved to Sun City, here in balmy Arizona. If they had stayed in Southern California (whence they came), would a competent doctor there have recognized her cancer in time to save her?

Probably not.

Smoking tobacco should never have been legal. The accursed, poisonous stuff should have been banned the minute it was proven that smoking that shit causes cancer, and that it is addictive.

Some doctor should have had the wherewithal to at least TRY to talk my mother into quitting.

My father should have insisted that she quit, at the same time he did.

Their horrific experience in the Sun City nursing home, as she lay dying, should have been actionable. We should have sued that outfit.

Why didn’t DXH, a partner in a heavy-hitting law firm, suggest that? Probably because I’d already taken up with TJK and so he didn’t give a damn about my family.

My father shouldn’t have had to transport my mother 20 miles from Sun City into North Central Phoenix to get decent nursing-home care.

DXH and I shouldn’t have blithely acquiesced to my father’s proposal that he marry the Dragon Lady, after my mother had died. We should have suggested he wait for a year. And during that year, we should have socialized with him, taken him on trips, had him meet people.

I should never have taken up with TJK. By the time my mother got sick, DXH probably didn’t want to have anything to do with any of us.

Hmmmm…. Y’know…about a third of my life shouldn’t have happened…

Home or Old Folkerie?

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Sittin’ around the house thinking….

Am I gonna be able to stay in my home until I croak over?

Or will I be forced to sell this place and lock myself up in one of those prisons for old folks?

You know whereof we speak: “life care communities.” All the rage for keeping elderly delinquents off the streets these days.

Welp, y’know… Those institutions had just come into vogue as my parents entered their dotage. My father, having gone to sea all his life, was not the slightest bit daunted at the prospect of selling their little home in Sun City and consigning himself to the care of an institution.

But…my mother would have none of it! NO WAY in hell was she going to put herself in a nursing home before she needed it!

Little did she know how soon she would need it. She died on my birthday in her 65th year.

The cancer so generously gifted to her by the world’s tobacco companies killed her….less than a month after her 65th birthday. The nursing home was rolling her, in her hospital bed, down to the Medicare ward when she passed.

She was decently cared for in the nursing home…probably because my father drove in from Sun City every day. walked in the door when they opened at 7 a.m., and sat there beside her bed, watching, until they threw him out at 11 p.m.

But…

Frankly, I think my father was right: They should have imprisoned themselves in Orangewood, the “life-care community” of my father’s choice, before she got sick. He had discovered the existence of such places about eight months or a year before she fell ill, and he’d tried to persuade her to move into one. She would have none of it.

And…

Well, I don’t blame her. Personally, I loathe institutional living. Truly, truly hated living in the dorm. And that is why I don’t want to move into one of them. Too much like living in prison…

After she died, he promptly sold the little house in Sun City and forked over most of his net worth to move into Orangewood. And I can assure you that he liked it there. Well: except that he made a key and unreconcilable mistake: he married a horrible dragon lady who, once she had him trapped with a wedding ring, made his life miserable.

No, he wouldn’t divorce her, because

a) He was afraid she would “get all my money” in divorce proceedings; and
b) He was afraid of the gossip a divorce would create among the other prison inmates.

Dragon Lady was outgoing and busy: she was extremely popular with the Orangewood natives. And he probably was right: if he did divorce her, he no doubt would want — if not need — to move out of that place. But…those “life-care communities” glom ALL YOUR CAPITAL. He probably wouldn’t have had enough money to get himself into some other place, plus all the money he had given to Orangewood was basically disappeared.

Result of that: he lived out the last few years of his life in utter misery.

***

Would my father have been better off if, instead of institutionalizing himself, he had hired people to come in and take care of him at his place in Sun City?

Putting aside the fact that he was too tight to do that…let us think about it:

* Here, Pool Dude keeps the drink pristine. My father’s Sun City palace had no pool. However, because it was so poorly built (basically uninsulated), its AC bills were far higher than mine. So one might regard SC power bills, compared to my house, as a wash…in the pool.

* Wonder-Cleaning Lady comes in every two weeks and renders the house spotless. Because there are no kids or cats here, the place stays reasonably clean between visits.

* Gerardo wrangles the landscaping — which, because it’s xeric, doesn’t demand much. It has an automatic watering system: I don’t even have to do a hose-drag to maintain the place.

* I have no problem caring for a small dog. Ruby is basically effortless, as roommates go.

Given that my father’s house was paid for, to have stayed in Sun City and hired a yard guy and a cleaning lady wouldn’t have cost him anything LIKE what Orangewood cost. Not even if he hired someone to come into the house daily, check on him, take him to the grocery store, maybe prepare a week’s worth of meals for him.

Zillow estimates my house’s current value at $484,100. Borrowing against that would buy a WHOLE lot of service from Pool Dude, Lawn Dude, and the Cleaning Lady from Heaven. Years’ worth.

And again, let’s remember, he didn’t need either a pool dude or a lawn dude…

Now, what did my father get at the honored old-folkerie?

At Orangewood: a two-bedroom apt.  They refuse to tell you the cost on their website…which ought to tellya something….  As I recall, it took the entire proceeds of the sale of his house to get him into that place. The apartment was tiny: I would describe it as an elaborate studio apt. It didn’t have a real kitchen — just a counter with a minimal stove and a sink. The living room, dining area (if you could call it that), and kitchen occupied one (count it: 1) room.

Median monthly cost of “independent living” in Arizona is $2,738.

He couldn’t have afforded that. ONE YEAR would consume almost a third of his life savings. That’s $32,856/year, bare minimum. Without maintaining your car, without going anywhere, without even buying clothes. Basically what was happening was that he was forking over ALL of his Social Security, plus a substantial chunk of his savings.

It certainly would not cost $35,000+ a year to hire someone to come in and take care of my house. The total cost of everything — maintenance, car, groceries, utilities, pool care, and general living expenses — may come to something like that. Or not…. just now I’m not drawing anything like that out of savings, but I get a decent amount of SS. Not enough to live in middle-class grandeur, but certainly not so little that I would starve.

What that suggests, IMHO, is that moving into one of those places would cost as much as — or more than! — I would have to spend to stay here and hire people to come in and help me. The money I take out of savings, in most years, is recovered because the remainder stays in professionally managed investments.

I would be better off — and my son would be better off — if I can manage to stay in this place until I die, or at least until a few months before that happens. Proceeds from the sale of this house would nicely plump up his retirement savings. Or he could sell his place, invest any profit from that, then move into this place and invest the monthly amount he’s been forking over to his mortgage company.

Speaking of the value of a shack, my parents’ house in Sun City last sold for $255,000: two and a half times the amount of my father’s life savings. Lest you think that was bargain, the place was about the size of the first apartment DXH and I moved into. I think they paid about $8,000 for that house.

Indeed, that first apartment may have been bigger than the SC house…it certainly was no smaller.

Our apartment:

dining area
living room
2 bedrooms
kitchen
Walk-in storage closet in kitchen
2 bathrooms????? Can’t recall…maybe not, though

SC house

dining area
living room
2 bedrooms
kitchen
2 bathrooms
Don’t recall a storage closet, but think there was space behind carport
Lots of wasted space in hallway

The SC house last sold for $255,000!!!!!  2 1/2 times the total nest egg that my father saved for his retirement!

Arizona Magnificence

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Oh, my. How is it possible for the sky to be so magnificent? For the air to be so charged? For beauty to be so beautiful?

Yep. this is one of those incredible, awe-inspiring, can’t-possibly-be-real monsoon afternoons.

A great wind blows through, laughing and celebrating. Vast, miles-high piles of white and pearl-gray clouds loom upward, ever upward, then scud ahead of the fierce winds. The palm trees bend before the wind. The ringy-dingies clang and chatter with each gust that blasts under the eaves.

Ruby loafs on the bed in front of the open drapes, not impressed. The human dares not scarf down another glass of wine, lest she and the dawg need to flee.

What an afternoon!

And yes, it is magnificence. That’s really the only word you can assign to an Arizona monsoon: magnificence.

Why on earth would anyone else want to live anywhere else…on earth?

No Title?? How about…”How they came, how they went”…

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How he must have suffered.

That’s what I think, when I recall my mother’s dying…in their marital bed, in the bedroom of their beloved little house in Sun City.

My mother smoked herself to death.

Yes.

She knew: she knew smoking would kill her, and she did it anyway. She smoked. And she smoked. And she smoked. Every conscious moment, she had a goddamned cigarette in her mouth.

Did she care that it would kill her?

Apparently not.

But more likely, she thought the whole “fatal smoking habit” thing was some kind of scam. A fraud perpetrated by Big Brother, whose motive was to control our behavior.

She told me she started smoking when she was just 16. And she was 60-something when the habit brought her to her bed. So…really…it was reasonable (in its way) to believe the whole “Smoking Causes Cancer” Thing was Big Brother trying to tell you what to do. And what not to do.

Far as I’m concerned, she was murdered. Killed by greedy thieves who wanted nothing other than to get her to trade her cash for their filthy weed. They got their way. And she died.

Horribly.

He was amazing. He cared for her, lovingly and kindly, through hour after hour and day after day and week after week of horrific suffering. Suffering that was inflicted as much on him as on her.

Tales of the Hood…

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Argh! Started to write this and then discovered I was typing away in the middle of y’day’s post. Trying again…

Sunday morning
8 a.m.

Temp: 92 degrees
Humidity: 28%
Predicted high: 108 degrees

Just back from the daily junket around the park. I’m soaked. Ruby just drank half a (large!!) bowl of water. Fluffy white clouds still float abcove, though not as colorfully as y’day’s.

Oh, well. The sticky weather does cut down, at least a bit, on the Dog Parade over at the park. Only counted six dogs over there, none of them off-lead (for a change).

Trudged past the (still vacant, still wrecked) home of the neighbors whose son got in trouble with the law.

This was the guy I hired to prune the (now defunct) tree in front. He supposedly had taken a course in tree care and pruning at the Desert Botanical Garden, potentially a BFD.

Well. If he did, he wasn’t payin’ any attention in class. 🙁

He pretty much trashed the tree, which I eventually had to have removed. How was I pi$$ed? Let me count the ways….

Those poor people eventually lost the house, where they’d lived while their kids grew to adulthood. My guess is, they were original owners. But their son’s escapades bankrupted them…so out they went.

Some fly-by-night contractors bought the place. They’ve  been poking away at it for the past two or three years. It’s still a wreck…the pool empty and trashed, the backyard a disaster area, the front yard churned-up dirt and dead trees. Jayzuz!

The neighbors must love it…

The place is, one must allow, an inauspicious investment. It’s right on Feeder Street North-West, which carries traffic inbound from the working-class west side all the way to downtown Phoenix. So that means everybody who works in the high-rise office buildings down there, everybody who has a blue-collar job  in the yards to the south of downtown, every lawn dude driving his truck and crew into town to mow and trim some richerati’s yard: they ALL HEAD SOUTH ON THAT STREET. Five fine mornings a week.

Well. And back north in the evening.

So the house is noisy and bathed in exhaust fumes, every rush hour. I guess some people don’t mind that, because Feeder N/W is lined with rather nice homes. The shack on the corner is the only one standing vacant.

Tbis is what happens, in lovely Arizona, if you happen to have a kid who gets in trouble with the law. It doesn’t just wreck the kid’s life. It wrecks yours, too.

A friend had that happen: her son got caught diddling a barfly who was three days (!!) under the age of consent. Her mother, having lost patience with telling her darling daughter to quit bringing men home and jumping into bed with them, called the cops and had my friend’s son arrested. Child molesting, y’know.

Yeah. He ended up serving a prison sentence, unable to get a decent job, living with his mother.

Fortunately, she’s a very smart and resourceful lady. She converted an old garage behind her historic home into a handsome studio, where her son dwells in peace.

But most people don’t have a fall-back like that. Apparently our former neighbors did not.

Hence, another tale from the ‘Hood…

Soggy Doggy Glorious Day…

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WHAT a spectacular morning!

High clouds make for a glorious sunrise as Ruby the Corgi sets out to drag the Hu-mann around the neighborhood. Oh, my: it’s just gorgeous out there.

And damp. And sticky… Very humid: 31%.

What really, dear Wunderground, does that mean? Are you saying that 31% of the atmosphere we’re trudging through is water?

😀

Could be, I reckon. But Ruby doesn’t mind. She charges ahead, a little furry brown rocket. We fly through the ‘Hood, around Upper Richistan, up toward Gangbanger’s Way. Past Marge’s house, apparently unoccupied (????) but not for sale yet.

Marge was (is?) well into her 80s. She wishes, more than anything, to evade being stuck into the Beatitudes or Orangewood or any other such holding pen for the elderly. But there’s no sign she’s living in the house. So…I fear the worst.

She said she had willed the place to her son — meaning she willed him about half a million bucks worth of real estate. He doesn’t live here, so…as soon as title to the house passes to him, he presumably will put it on the market.

It’s a pleasant old 1970s ranch-style house. Not to my taste, and now needing a bunch of repairs and upgrades. But still…lots of people would fall all over themselves to get it.

I actually might be among them, if it weren’t so nerve-gratingly close to Gangbanger’s Way. The traffic racket there would be just unholy! It’s a drag strip for the local delinquents, so all night you get ROAR ROAR ROAR from the brats. And it’s a main drag into town from the west side, so every rush hour you get ROAR ROAR ROAR from the unholy mobs of commuters trudging to work. And let’s not forget the hospital up the road on Gangbanger’s, bringing you WEEE-OOO WEEE-OOO WEEE-OOO from the ambulances racing toward the emergency room.

{sigh} I do miss Marge, who had become my morning walking buddy. I’m afraid she probably fell — or else had a heart attack or stroke — and ended up in one of those horrible prisons for old folks. She dreaded that fate even more than I do. Truly: I would so rather be dead. If she had passed on, surely her son would have sold her house by now (he lives in some other part of the country). She probably landed in an old folks’ slam and asked him to hang on to it lest she somehow manage to escape.

Oh well.

The spectacularity of the sunrise has now passed, and what we have are high, pale gray clouds. Not the rainy type…just the humid type.

What do I hafta do today?

* Pick up the office.

* Call Cox. Demand that they send paper bills. (They’re shifting to “paperless bills.” No, thank you!!)

*Figure out, come to think of it, whether Cox is auto-paid now, or whether I have to send the ba*tards an e-payment or check every month. I think the latter, because I don’t trust Cox.

* Make a grocery store run.

* Argue with my son over medical bullsh!t.

Hmm…. Actually, I could physically go to the credit union and have one of their staff check on the autopays for me. This, while it entails an annoying drive, would take me past THE best Sprouts store in the Valley. And that would allow me to stock up on a pile of outstanding foodoids.

***

Cleaning out the e-mail in-box. OVER 500 NUISANCE E-MAILS, just in August!

Can you imagine? Hope I’m not deleting anything important. I just don’t have the patience to check every goddamn one of those things — not even looking at the email but just checking the subject or sender line. So WHAM! They all get deleted.

But even that is a nuisance. After hitting mass-delete after mass-delete, there are still A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX junk-mail messages sitting there waiting to be sent to trash. And that doesn’t count all the real messages from outfits like Amazon and from my client whose work I’m not in the mood to do…

Crazy-making!