This last week was bizarre, deep, meaningful, broken, nasty, and bonding.
2 weeks ago my grandmother died. No one knows exactly how long she was dead for, but it had been anywhere from 2-5 days in a hot home where she was bloated and unrecognizable when my uncle found her. The police came and took her body to the morgue, but left behind was a large puddle of blood, urine, and leaked out body fluids in the kitchen floor. No one cleaned it up and even revisited that house for over a week, so it festered in that tiny 1000 square foot home in the hot Arizona Summer. I don't know why I feel compelled to write this here, but I need to.
After the funeral and lunch, our family went to see the house and help my uncle clean things up. I don't think any of us realized there had been no cleanup and were not quite prepared to see and smell what we did. I will just enter my dad's email description here:
"Got the worst job in my life but, I had to do it for family sake. Went to the houseafter the funeral where Betty's mom died and almost threw up when they open the door. Thought they had clean but Chester could not do it. The stench of death was overwhelming. Never smell dead people before, like bloated deer by the road that been there in the sun for a week. The mostly dried blood pool in the kitchen was 2'x 6' maybe bigger and 1/2" thick in places. Very hard to scrap off and released burst of vapor. I picked up 3 - 5 gallon buckets of blood and bodily fluids. Use 3 gallons of cleaning fluid straight from the bottle. Almost threw up 5 times. Could not make the children ( Betty, brother and sisters) clean up their mothers blood, just not right. And they had to go through the belongings in the stink. . So I did most and jennifer helped me finish up 2 hrs later. 4 hour job, what a mess... jennifer was a champ. "
So my dad and I cleaned up the biohazard material. I am glad we were there to do it though. Glad we could serve in this way. We bonded over it a little bit.
I also learned so much about my family, my mother and her childhood, and saw this house which I had never seen before. So I am thankful for all the things God showed me during this strange strip and also thankful to be able to spend time with this side of the family too.
This is the house my mom and her sibling grew up with. This was a home of great sorrow and difficulty for my mom also, so much so that I never came back here until now. It was complicated. Life is complicated. that's all for now.
2 weeks ago my grandmother died. No one knows exactly how long she was dead for, but it had been anywhere from 2-5 days in a hot home where she was bloated and unrecognizable when my uncle found her. The police came and took her body to the morgue, but left behind was a large puddle of blood, urine, and leaked out body fluids in the kitchen floor. No one cleaned it up and even revisited that house for over a week, so it festered in that tiny 1000 square foot home in the hot Arizona Summer. I don't know why I feel compelled to write this here, but I need to.
After the funeral and lunch, our family went to see the house and help my uncle clean things up. I don't think any of us realized there had been no cleanup and were not quite prepared to see and smell what we did. I will just enter my dad's email description here:
"Got the worst job in my life but, I had to do it for family sake. Went to the houseafter the funeral where Betty's mom died and almost threw up when they open the door. Thought they had clean but Chester could not do it. The stench of death was overwhelming. Never smell dead people before, like bloated deer by the road that been there in the sun for a week. The mostly dried blood pool in the kitchen was 2'x 6' maybe bigger and 1/2" thick in places. Very hard to scrap off and released burst of vapor. I picked up 3 - 5 gallon buckets of blood and bodily fluids. Use 3 gallons of cleaning fluid straight from the bottle. Almost threw up 5 times. Could not make the children ( Betty, brother and sisters) clean up their mothers blood, just not right. And they had to go through the belongings in the stink. . So I did most and jennifer helped me finish up 2 hrs later. 4 hour job, what a mess... jennifer was a champ. "
So my dad and I cleaned up the biohazard material. I am glad we were there to do it though. Glad we could serve in this way. We bonded over it a little bit.
I also learned so much about my family, my mother and her childhood, and saw this house which I had never seen before. So I am thankful for all the things God showed me during this strange strip and also thankful to be able to spend time with this side of the family too.
This is the house my mom and her sibling grew up with. This was a home of great sorrow and difficulty for my mom also, so much so that I never came back here until now. It was complicated. Life is complicated. that's all for now.
