Posted by:
GayLayAle
(
)
Date: January 22, 2011 03:24PM
I found myself living under the naïve delusion that during the time my mom was in Washington, our family would be left to recover from the events that had transpired over the past weeks, months and years. You would think by this time, I wouldn’t allow myself to be lulled into this false sense of security about my life. Part of me thinks it was some kind of internal survival instinct; that I had to believe something good was going to come out of all this.
Not much time passed, two or three days maybe, after my mom left for Spokane, and there was still that nagging energy in the air, sort of like those days you have when you wake up and and you’re absolutely positive there’s something wrong. No matter what you do you can never quite put your finger on it? That energy hung around in the air for days. I tried my best to ignore it, but my intuition or whatever you want to call it kicked in and I went to my dad, who had spent most of the last few days in bed, still recuperating from his surgery- something he hadn’t had the opportunity to do much since he was discharged from the hospital. My dad and I spoke for quite awhile about everything that had gone on. After a few minutes, I asked him point blank what was going to happen now. He told me the bishop had met with him, and as a ward service project, a few people were going to come in and help clean our house.
As I mentioned earlier, the house had been neglected for quite some time. It needed to be deep cleaned. To be honest, I was actually looking forward to having a clean house. It had been quite awhile since we’d had that luxury. If I had known what was really about to happen, I would have been down on my knees 24 hours a day with a toothbrush, cleaning the entire house by myself. I would have gladly accepted bruises on my knees and muscles so sore I wouldn’t be able to move, and the cramped hands and the smell of bleach that would never quite come off my skin no matter how many showers I took. I would have even gladly cleaned the house with my tongue.
It began innocently enough. Four or five members of the relief society showed up at our door armed with cleaning products and buckets, and genuinely kind smiles on their faces. These women I truly don’t place any blame on for what happened. The women with the cleaning arsenal were the closest people to friends that my mom had. They began in the kitchen, and really CLEANED. Things were pulled out of the kitchen cupboards and the insides of the cupboards were washed. The kitchen was really getting CLEAN. It started smelling really good, and I actually began to look forward to coming home.
But then, more people started showing up to ‘help’. It had been decided by the bishop that in order to pay the bill for my mom’s rehabilitation, a yard sale needed to be put together with any excess things in the house that would fetch a price. Then the real fun began. The house was swarming with people, everyone from the entire Elders Quorum, and the entire Relief Society. Kids, teenagers, practically the entire ward began to descend on our house.
Rooms began to be torn apart. Every closet was opened and emptied. Every box, every container, every drawer was pillaged. Family heirlooms were taken. Our entire lives, beginning to end, were laid bare for the entire ward to see. These people were quite literally airing our dirty laundry out all over the neighborhood. I remember one day, coming home from being someplace, and found three men from the Elders Quorum in my bedroom, going through my closet and the drawers of my bureau. I. Freaked. Out. I began screaming and yelling at them to get the fuck out of my room. I literally pushed them out the door, then moved my bureau in front of it and barricaded myself in. I had finally reached my boiling point. I felt something in my brain snap and I began tearing apart my bedroom. I had never felt that kind of rage before. I had never let something take over my body that way. All the pain, humiliation, coercion, manipulation all came flooding back, hitting me like a huge wave crashing into a rock on the shore. So this was what it felt like to be crazy.
In reality, I know it’s kind of silly to be so protective of STUFF. Physical things. Possessions. Some of which to this day I have no idea why I would want to keep. But it wasn’t just stuff in my mind at that time. These were things that had been a part of my life. Evidence of the past. Proof that certain events had really taken place.
And it wasn’t just the stuff. It was the feeling of violation, of losing every shred of privacy our family ever had. Of feeling like this was something all these people in our ward had just been waiting on for years, the chance to dig in and get to the fleshy center of our family. To figure out What We Were All About. To uncover every dirty little secret and expose it. Then, they might Finally Understand Us.
The pillaging continued for weeks. More than a few of the ladies from the Relief Society, a majority of the women that had first come in and began to clean, began to be completely disgusted with what was going on. They saw people pocketing things they found that they wanted to keep. They saw people picking and choosing things that would be in the Yard Sale, but deftly hidden away and priced so low so they themselves could get their hands on it.
The aforementioned women stopped coming to the house. They couldn’t take it anymore than I could. Down to the deepest parts of my soul, I know this small group of women genuinely cared for my mom and our entire family, and believed what they were doing was the right thing. For that, I will always hold a special place in my heart for them. Particularly for a woman I’ll call Debbie, who grabbed the jewelry box full of my Tutu’s jewelry, some of which was priceless, and kept it at her house until my mom’s return. She didn’t want The Mob stealing or selling it. Thank you, Debbie.