When will my father get off holding yard sales in a pandemic, for Christ’s sake! Who does he believe is going to buy second, third, or fourth hand stuff that’s been handled over and over again? There are plenty of people who don’t want to handle old stuff when there isn’t a worldwide health crisis. In fact, lots of people don’t even want to go out for essentials, like food, so I imagine he’s destined for disappointment.

These are the kinds of things about him that make me absolutely crazy. I am 99% sure, for example, that he had no hand sanitizer available in some central location for people to use. He won’t have put signs up requesting people use masks. We’ll be lucky if he masks up himself.

So, breathe… A yard sale. This requires everyone shifting schedules so dad can get an early start. My sister took the morning shift from 7 a.m. to noon and I took over from noon ‘til 5 p.m. It was the regular routine for me – have a little lunch and start cleaning. Vacuum. Wash the floors. Clean the toilets. Wipe down surfaces. The trouble is that mom doesn’t really get the idea of not stepping on wet floors or not putting things back in place until the surfaces are cleaned. She is continually underfoot, trying to be helpful.

But then she gets disoriented and hallucinates that her father was at the house. Or that somebody was there and just left all the cleaning supplies in the hallway not recognizing that it was me. Then she insists that she has to go get the mail. She’s becoming a little OCD about it and will not accept that she can’t get the mail because she has no key for the mailbox. She believes that the mail is put in the office by “the man,” basically someone who sits at a desk in the lobby on weekdays, and he retrieves it for them. That may be true for packages but not regular mail. 

I couldn’t get her off it, so down the elevator we went, with me insisting she wear her mask which she put on and promptly pulled down under her nose. There was another woman, older, in the lobby retrieving her mail and mom got too close to her – the woman backing away because mom has no sense of space boundaries even under the best of circumstances. I was on mom’s heels to show her the box and that we had no key, mom making some nonsensical remarks to this woman. 

I was stunned.

And then this woman gave me the eye. She clearly wanted to talk with me and asked if I was “the daughter.” I wasn’t sure what to expect but assumed that it would be something about mom’s behavior, her not respecting space boundaries. She pulled me aside and said sotto voce, “I just wanted to tell you that there have been complaints about body odor for both of your parents.”

I was stunned. And embarrassed and mortified and… well, you can imagine. At that moment mom was by the elevator and my goal was to get her away as quickly as possible because I knew beyond a doubt that mom would be suspicious of this woman talking with me in a whisper. As soon as we got on the elevator, sure enough, mom asked: “What was she asking you.” I had to keep it light with oh, she just wanted to know if I was your daughter. Then mom went on with “Well, what did she think? That you were his (meaning dad’s) girlfriend?” Crazy things.

Now, either my olfactory senses have disintegrated into nothing, I’m used to my parents’ smell, or I have COVID because they don’t smell bad in the sense of smelling like urine or feces. The problem is they LOOK like they could smell bad because dad puts a shirt on and within 15 minutes dribbles coffee down the front, staining the garment, and doesn’t change it. He also doesn’t really know how to do the wash, and why would he since he never did laundry in his life when my mother could, and doesn’t know how to pre-treat stains or do a deep cleaning. He’s never much cared about being presentable and now he can’t see properly either so doesn’t see what he looks like or chooses to overlook it. My suspicion is that he doesn’t wash clothes, or himself, as frequently as he should, leaving him with a stale smell, rather than B.O.

My mother used to chastise him for wearing some dreadful article of clothing that was dirty or torn. Now, of course, she doesn’t recognize that she wears stained and torn clothing herself. It’s not for lack of trying to get her to change. She refuses to buy any clothes or accept new ones. I’ve given her clothes under the guise that they don’t fit me and hoping they’ll fit her. I’m still trying to find the pair of slacks I gave her that she conceded to put on two weeks ago, but have now utterly disappeared. They aren’t in any place you would expect to find a garment, like a closet or a drawer, and I haven’t had an opportunity to search the rest of the house for where she has hidden them. The only plus is that I did get her to change the shirt with two missing buttons and stains down the front and removed it from the house.

It was not an easy day and I’m not sure what to do about it all. The damage is done with the people who live around them. They are a snooty bunch, as gossipy as a bunch of high schoolers, and you can’t undo that first, second, and third impression. If they think you stink, stink you will. The hard part is having this conversation with my father. What am I supposed to say to him? Your neighbors think you stink? You look like you should be pushing a grocery cart through downtown? Being stubbornly yourself is one thing. Being oblivious to what people think about you is something else again.

When my mother had her mind she worried about what people thought about her or the actions of her family. She still retains some of that worry; SHE was mortified when dad was investigating the temporary dumpster outside the building where they live, looking for “treasure.” 

That’s all gone now, of course. She is reduced to us having to trick her to change her shirt and put on a clean one. To us sneaking in and removing torn and stained clothing. We are those imaginary thieves made real.