I made the usual Saturday visit to my parents’ apartment yesterday but instead of coming equipped with a laptop, I came with a bucket, replacement bags for the vacuum cleaner, cleaning supplies, and a mop. Yes, I decided it was my mission to clean the apartment. 

It’s something useful to do while I’m there, and, boy, does it need to be done. Let’s face it: As we age, our senses begin to deteriorate and when a person has Alzheimer’s it’s even more pronounced. The sense of smell is one of the first things to go, along with taste, vision and hearing. I think mom’s sense of smell is almost nothing and probably explains her disinterest in eating much beyond toast or cereal. Smell and taste are closely aligned and if the sense of smell is lacking, food just doesn’t have a lot of appeal. She’s just hungry, but doesn’t remember if or when she last ate anything.

Dad isn’t all that interested in eating decent food either and I suspect for many of the same reasons. He was diagnosed and treated for lymphoma in 2017 and I just don’t think his sense of smell or taste ever really returned to what it was before radiation and chemo. He also lost several teeth as an aftereffect, his side of the family was never blessed with great dentition anyway, which limits his ability to chew anything but softer foods.  

Ironically, my mother could smell things from three rooms away when we were kids so there really wasn’t any chance of sneaking any illegal substances while at home. She’d smell it, or we feared she would, so it kept us on the straight and narrow by and large.

This is all to say that neither of them realizes that the cat box smells bad, there’s a lot of floor dust on the hard surfaces and cat hair in the carpet, and the surfaces need wiping down. One of the cats also often doesn’t use the box as she should – she’s decided she doesn’t want to share pooping space with the other cat – so leaves undesired presents where they ought not to be. Fortunately this seems to be in the same room that the litter box is in, not scattered throughout the house, but it means that room needs deeper cleaning that it gets.

It’s not their fault, my parents I mean, not the cats. They simply can’t see or smell like they used to. Dad has macular degeneration and can barely get the key in the lock when he comes in the apartment. The change from outside light to the dimmer light of the hallway just won’t allow his eyes to adjust quickly so he can fumble for some time trying to get the key into the hole because he is effectively blind for a while. He also can’t really read small print anymore. So how can we expect him, or mom, to evaluate the state of the cleanliness of the apartment? We can’t, and it’s unrealistic of us to expect them to be able to do that.

That doesn’t excuse the clutter, however. Jeez Louise. Dad has piles of paper on the three or four desks in the apartment, junk mail type stuff like the “Publishers Clearinghouse” flyers, or How To Get Rich Quick flimflam, and mom won’t part with People magazines. Dad also continues to bring stuff home that he is convinced will make a buck or two at the flea market, but often doesn’t. It just clutters up the house. And the basement storage space, the rented storage space, the space in the house they’ve moved from, which hasn’t sold yet, and the van. 

It’s a LOT of stuff. Crap, most of it, and God help me, I am absolutely sure dad will not have disposed of any of it when he goes to the great beyond, which means I and my sisters will have to get rid of it all. 

It’s in the blood for dad. His father was a junk collector and was a pretty good old-school auctioneer, the kind that says “hum-ana hum-ana” a lot while calling bids. The house my dad grew up in had two barns on the premises that did not hold livestock, but stuff. It was a glorious place to explore as a child, but without two barns on his own property, not exactly the same for dad. He did have a second bay built on the garage at the house, just to store stuff in, but will have to give it up when the house sells. 

I despair of it, I really do. My father always goes on about living to be 100, to which I respond: “You’d better get rid of all of this junk by the time you go because my 74 year old ass will make a bonfire out of what’s left.”

At any rate, I’m suffering the consequences of overdoing it yesterday. I did some preliminary cleaning of my own house prior to heading on over and then spent about two and a half hours cleaning my parent’s apartment. It’s not nearly done, but at least the carpets are vacuumed, the floors mopped and the guest bathroom where the litterbox lives is disinfected for the time being. I woke up with aching calves, who knows why, and feet that creaked. Aleve is my friend this morning. Lest I sound wimpy, let’s be clear: The apartment is almost 1700 s.f., more living space than my own house, but at least theirs is all on one floor. 

I’m not as young as I used to be, either, but at least I still have a sense of smell.