The temporal nature of all things. Tempus fugit. in The Big, Blue, House. Year two.

Sometimes the internet is a curse, being able to look up anything, anyone, any place. I mentioned my conservative uncle’s girlfriend on Reddit, the fact that she called me a “parasite” for receiving disability, when I made the dumbass mistake of trying to reconnect with her a few years ago. Then I thought I’d look up my uncle, her partner since at least 1988, and see if he was dead yet. I never liked the man, and he’d been dealing with kidney failure since 2004. (Don’t take too much Tylenol, kids.)

He is indeed. He passed away in 2021. So then I tried to find information on his partner, but Google is only finding her name and the town they lived in mentioned together once. - In the obituary of another cousin, saying that she had been preceded in death by my uncle’s girlfriend. I’m guessing she died and had her obituary in one of the cities where her daughters live.

So that’s two more down, plus the cousin. (Yes, it’s distant inbreeding. Or it would be if they’d had any kids, but they were both already too old when they met, and they were 5th or 6th cousins at best.)

So then I wanted to see who now owned her old house. First I needed the address, so I was looking at Google maps.

And it’s an empty lot. It’s been torn down.

That’s more disappointing to me than any of the deaths. It was a neat little house, with a tiny second floor balcony, and a trellis around the porch. I stayed there for about a week, while my family moved from Tennessee to Illinois, when I was fifteen. At the time I thought the place was positively magical, cluttered as it was with crystal trees, sequined dresses, candles, perfume bottles, jewelry, and just all of the stuff you’d expect a house with four women in it to have. I sat on the porch swing all night with the guy I’d lose my virginity to. (He’s dead now too, according to Truthfinder.)

She lived there with her three daughters, or had, until she moved in with my uncle. When I was staying there, two of the daughters lived there by themselves, and she used the house for storage for her hoped-for second-hand shop that she wanted to have some day. So between the girls, and her ever-growing collection of stuff she hoped to resell, it was a sparkly, perfume-smelling hoarder house.

But at the time most of the rooms were still empty enough to be useable. Over the years, as the daughters moved out, and she continued to collect stuff, that changed. The last time I saw the interior was about 2004, and at that point it was wall-to-wall boxes and bags, with what my father referred to as a “pig trail” through the house. - As in the way wild pigs will make a little path through the forest, not a comment on her cleanliness. My father was from Kentucky, born in 1921.

She did get her second hand shop at one point, about 1998? I think? It was open for two years, and she never sold enough stuff to consistently pay the rent. But she never stopped collecting clothes, and talking about trying again.

When she’d drop by my parent’s house, my mother would always talk about how she dreaded her sitting her purse down, because she had roaches. When I stayed at the house, I never noticed them. But as the boxes and bags piled up, I gather their numbers grew.

If she hadn’t been so awful with me, I might’ve asked her if she was trying to sell anything on Ebay. But I think she was more interested in the buying, than the possible selling.

Still, it saddens me when a once nice house is demolished. Particularly one I had some pleasant memories in.

Oh well.

Addendum: Google maps street view time machine has pictures from September of last year, before it was torn down. It looked pretty terrible. Rotten wood sagging around the eaves, small trees growing along the foundation, garbage on the porch, the back yard completely overgrown.

I can almost understand the compulsion to shop. But letting the house where you’re storing it all decompose is just beyond my comprehension.

Maybe the reason she referred to me as a parasite, and the reason she allowed her house to literally rot had a common neurological cause. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that a Red Hatter would have other lapses in critical thinking as well.

Still, it makes me sad. And even with alexithymia I know it’s saddening, because I have the compulsion to physically sulk over it.

I’ll try to distract myself with lunch. I saw a recipe earlier for kidney bean and oat burgers. I might try that.

Last updated March 05, 2023