Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Mar 18, 2009
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
House Clearance
There was a death in our street a couple of weeks ago: it was sad really, as she was an alcoholic and a bit simple, as she was said to have had learning difficulties when she was young. I always saw her coming to and from the local corner shop with her shopping trolley full of bottles and cans that you could hear rattling as she walked past. She always used to say hello to me when I met her if she was sober, but when she was drunk she would not talk to anyone: she seemed to need all her concentration just to walk and get where she was going, while talking to herself, and sometimes shouting abuse at anyone she met. There was no malice in her threats, as she was drunk and never really knew what she was doing.
It was sad really, to see her wearing those scruffy clothes all the time, and now that she has gone, I can still see her walking with her shopping trolley at her heels. She had a lot of cats, and how she managed to keep them all I have no idea, yet they used to run up the path to greet her when she returned home from the corner shop, which was the only place she ever went, as I never saw her get on or off any of the buses that stopped right outside that shop. Anything else she needed to get by was delivered by her cousin who lived nearby, and who used to visit her regularly.
I can remember the night she died—it was in the early hours of the morning, and we were both up, as my wife had had another attack and required her nebuliser to help her breathe properly, as she has emphysema. I had gone into the kitchen to make a coffee while we were up. I noticed a police car parked in our street, with the emergency lights still flashing, and then more police arrived with the ambulance. The following morning the police came back yet again. We were beginning to think that there had been a crime committed and that her death had been suspicious.
It wasn't until later that we found out that the only reason the police had been involved was because they had to break into the house: her cousin had seen her lying on the kitchen floor when she looked through the window after not getting an answer when she rang the door bell, or even when she tried to phone her earlier. The following day we saw two people go into the house with the cousin, they turned out to be the dead woman's brother and sister who hadn't seen or contacted their sister for years. The cousin told us later that they had only turned up to see what they could take out of the house, which we agreed with her was totally out of order and in bad taste.
To make things worse, they never even attended the funeral which took place two days later, with only one person, the cousin, attending. That was really sad to see, yet the cousin had told us that the family had not spoken to the deceased for years, ever since she was diagnosed as being an alcoholic. The whole situation was so sad, especially when we saw the RSPCA officer came to the cousin's house just up the road from us. They had to take away all the cats, which the cousin had been looking after ever since the death.
My wife is a really emotional, caring person, who always sees the good in people, and is sentimental in a way. She was really upset one day when I got home from a shopping trip in town. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me to come to the kitchen window, which I did. There we could see the council workers who came to clear the deceased's house, and load into an open truck, which had a large cage on the back to stop the load falling onto the road. They were carrying the furniture up to the truck then smashing it up to make it smaller before loading it onto the truck. I thought that was such a waste, as most of that could have been used by poorer people who have no furniture, but I later found out that this was for so called health and safety reasons!
Anyway, while we were watching this go on, they carried the fridge up the path, and as they did so, the door flew open and some of the contents fell out onto the ground. All this along with the smashing of everything up was too much for my wife and she began to cry. When I asked her why, my wife explained to me, that she did not want that to happen to our belongings when our time came.
I tried to reassure her that would not happen, but in the end I had to call her son up on the phone and ask him to come and have a talk with his Mum. When he arrived he promised her that he would ensure that would never happen, and that he would take care of everything. I think the reason for her fear was because we saw the same thing happen when an old man who used to live across the road from us died a few months before. That memory reminded her of the own mother's death, when all she saw was a small pile of black plastic bags laying in the corner of an emptied room, and that sight has remained with my wife ever since.
As she brushed away the tears she told me that no one deserves that to happen to them, and even though the woman who had died was an alcoholic, she was still a human being and deserved better— like I said earlier, she always sees the good in people. I sometimes think that there should be more people with that attitude and that would make this world a better place to live.
