Kinsler: Helping a friend in need
We may recover from this latest trip, but I suspect that it’ll be a while. Natalie’s old friend Sally is probably suffering from dementia, and my Natalie is devastated.
Sally is personable, literate, and has a sense of humor that enables her to laugh at Natalie, which nobody else would dare to do. She also cannot remember anything for longer than about 60 seconds. She lives several hours away, which makes it difficult for us to render much assistance, for Sally realizes that something is very wrong with her mind and, as troubled people will, has closed in upon herself.
Somehow Sally became a very neat hoarder. Her small apartment was loaded to the walls with books, magazines, old mail, plastic grocery bags and (I hesitate to mention it) unwashed dishes. Sally objected strenuously and tearfully, but we had to act.
The piles of dishes, reminiscent of the Augean Stables, were my responsibility. There was no place to store anything, and it was with difficulty that I unearthed the small kitchen sink, long concealed beneath months of unwashed plates, bowls, and food containers. I scrubbed, and rinsed, and scrubbed a second time, dried (sort of) and deposited the finished work in several cardboard boxes or, alternately, a trash bag for the irredeemable items.
Perhaps 100 pounds of polyethylene supermarket bags were stuffed into others, and the resulting globes were reduced in size, compressed by virtue of sitting on each one so they’d fit into the rear seat of Natalie’s Honda Accord. Giant Eagle Supermarkets, Inc. is likely endeavoring to account for a substantial increase in bags returned for recycling this week.
Natalie, with Sally’s reluctant assistance, worked on the books and the papers, most of which were advertisements. Some magazines dated to 2015. Loads of books went to the local public library’s book sale.
And then there was the automobile. Sally’s still a good driver, but there was a parking lot incident sufficient to break the glass and punch a sizeable hole in the passenger-side door. Local body shops quoted upwards of $2,000, which I thought was ridiculous. A bit of Internet search yielded a suitable door at a regional salvage yard for $200, and the folks at the salvage yard referred us to a local auto repair shop that would install the door for $80.
The ride to the salvage yard is a story in itself, for that portion of western Pennsylvania has remained untouched by more modern industry. Global warming notwithstanding, United States Steel’s Clairton Works sports five blast furnaces pumping steam into the sky, and you don’t want to ask about the nearby Koppers coke plant and the two dozen diesels idling on their four-track railroad line. All in all, it looks like an advertisement for the Greenpeace Foundation.
The trip took us through coal-mining communities unchanged since 1932 and along narrow roads mostly occupied by railroad tracks, where a gently-raised suburban couple might reasonably expect a steam locomotive to chug, whistle screaming, around the next bend.
We are back, finally. Sally’s apartment might or might not survive a visit from the eldercare people, and her car is driveable. It’s a red car with a bright blue passenger door, and she’s told Natalie that she sort of likes it that way.
Mark Kinsler, kinsler33@gmail.com, is convalescing from that three-day trip with Natalie under the supervision of housecats Webster and Gemma (currently asleep) in our elderly house in Lancaster.
This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Kinsler: Rendering assistance when a friend is in need
