Ask not for whom the bell tolls ; it tolls for thee .... A heads up

[JimmyHAD]

Sammie was my upstairs neighbor the past 6 & 1/2 years. He was quiet enough that I rarely heard him moving around, thanks to his decorum, and to the concrete floors. He retired about the same time I did 3 years ago, and it was rare for me to see him.

He was a hermit and when his now deceased brother would come to the door yelling his name and banging on the door Sam would ignore him. The guy would go down and throw pebbles at the window until Sam finally acknowledged him, and invited him up.

Sam didn't answer his telephone either. His message box was always full. He never used the air conditioning, even in the heat of summer in FL. Said he didn't like it. His 73 Mercedes broke down finally a few years ago, and Sam left it parked. He would walk a couple of miles to the store and back.

This was how I got to know him. On the occasions when I was sitting on my porch, or out in front of the apt and Sam came walking up. He would strike up a conversation and usually it would be about his time in the army in Viet Nam, or Germany. The arguments he got into with his superior non-coms and officers, or supervisors at work, and those who rode the bus he drove when he was still working. More or less the same thing every time for years.

I finally got Sam to give me an email address in case I needed to contact him for any sort of emergency, like a water leak from upstairs, or whatever. He would answer email in a timely manner. We developed a rapport and he liked to talk with me, though he said no one wanted to talk with him. I could tell he was lonely, and it was not unusual that our paths wouldn't cross for weeks at a time.

My downstairs neighbor noticed an odor. Since I smoke tobacco pipes pretty much one after another my sense of smell is not as acute as hers. She called the association and the president came over. He and I went to Sam's bedroom window and I yelled his name, then we noticed there were flies all over the inside of the window.

After his body was removed I was speaking with the first LEO on the scene. He said it looked to him as if Sam had been on his way from the bedroom to the kitchen and suffered cardiac arrest in the living room. I hope that is what happened, I was pondering whether he died quickly, or might have had a stroke and laid there for days unable to communicate and suffering a slow death. The officer said it appeared, from the level of decomposition, that Sam had laid there for 3 weeks to a month.

The owner of the apt lives out of state and trusted me with a key to the premises from the association until he could come down the following week. So I let the bio hazard crew in to clean up the rug and sheet rock saturated with bodily fluids. Fortunately for me, living downstairs, we have concrete floors. The next of kin, a surviving brother came over, and Sam's 40 year old son, who he hadn't seen since he was a little boy, came in from out of state.

I asked the brother if they were close and he said Sam wasn't close with anyone. He didn't even go to the funeral, this past November, when they buried the brother that used to come see him once in awhile, and never attended any family functions. The son asked me, "What was he like ?" A sad story.

I hadn't been in Sam's apt until the bio hazard crew. He was a hoarder and in the two bedroom apt the larger of the two was stacked with boxes one on top of the other, from the far corner, to the door, with not even a corridor for access. The other bedroom and living room were not that bad, but still filled with clutter. The brother and the son took what they wanted out of all of this, then at the owner's request I got a signed and notarized document that he (the owner of the apt) could dispose of the contents of the apt as he saw fit.

I watched as all of Sam's stuff was carried down to either be trucked to Goodwill, a small portion supposedly to be put on ebay by a friend of the owner who lives down here, and the rest thrown into a dumpster that the owner had dropped off by a trash company. It took a couple of days for the couple of guys the owner had hired outside of Home Depot to dump all the stuff that Sammie had accumulated in his 67 years.

I assume a bunch of that stuff meant a lot to Sam. It struck me that when my day comes to meet my demise all of this 'stuff', which means so much to me is just another man's trash. Sure, some of it is worth $, but at that point it won't matter to me. Still, as I noted in another thread, I'm going to make arrangements so that my church will get the valuables, and be able to reap whatever profit for their use.

I am, unlike my late hermit friend, sociable, so I have friends I routinely talk with daily, and if I didn't show up at church on a Sunday the pastor would be checking on me. So if I drop dead they'll find me pretty much within a day or so. Part of my purpose in posting this is to vent, but equally my purpose is a heads up to anyone who is in the same bag as Sammie.

Make a friend, or if you know someone who fits that hermit profile, check on them at least once a week. Last but not least enjoy your stuff, but remember you ain't taking any of it with you, and if what happens to it after you're gone means anything to you, make the necessary provisions to allot it to those you'd want it to go to.

[Magpie]

Its a sad thing. And i know I am heading down that road. Its one of the reasons I come to this site. While I know nobody on here is going to stop by and check to see if Im alright if they dont hear from me, this is as close to having friends as I get anymore.

I'm glad Sam at least had you to talk to on occasion. I'm betting it meant a lot to him even if he never said so.

[ScoutHikerDad]

Thanks for the reminder that even hermits get lonely, Jimmy. It's too bad so many old-timers end up like this, just sort of forgotten about in our youth-obsessed culture. But as our country swells with aging baby-boomers and "The Greatest Generation" rapidly dying off, not to mention our collective but unspoken decision as a culture to outsource and warehouse the care of our elderly in "assisted living facilities," which I'm sure you have many of in Florida as we do here, this will happen more and more often, I'm afraid.

This is why I have always tried to track down, chat with and help out the elderly when I can, starting with my Papaw in his later years before he died, to some elderly gentlemen I used to go to church with. We should all "adopt" an elderly neighbor or friend; I'm sure the blessings, karma, or whatever you want to call it will come back to us down the road.

[Haroldg48]

This is a very sad but evocative post Jimmy.

My mom was the opposite, personality-wise, with, to all appearances, a lot of "friends". She did like her "stuff" though, and kept it all, but neatly. When she passed on, my brother & I discovered how much "stuff" and tried to sort through it, but while some of it monetary value, and much held memories for us, it all had value to her and it pained us to dispose of any of it. However, we had no choice.

We went through it piece by piece, but too quickly, and found many pictures that no one still knew the people or memories they held. We found magazines that had pages folded over for unknown reasons and we found many other things.

In our case, though, just going through it made us realize it wasn't "stuff" to her. It had belonged to her father who died when she was 17, or was saved from the WWII period when common goods weren't available or disposable like they seem to be now. We found dress patterns, and fabric, and just all sorts of things that made us realize she had her family had led a hard life, to give s the relative comfort we grew up in -- poor, but never feeling poor.

Turns out we were rich beyond imagination because her "stuff" reminded us of stories she had told and what her life was really like in spite of all of those friends.

Sometimes blessings and riches hide in strange places.

Many thanks for reminding us.

[32t]

Tonight on my way home from work I called my friend "Sam". Most times I call him I laugh and tell him I am just bored driving and looking for some conversation. I hadn't spoke with him in over a week but he answered! We have had this discussion and what little family he has has tried to get him to move into assisted living or at least an apartment in town. My thoughts are that even if I don't agree with him he is of sound mind and able to care for himself who am I to tell him different. We have used frank terms like someone finding you 2 weeks later bloated in your living room and he is OK with that. Sam is a fun friend and I love him.

Don't tell him I said that!

[cudarunner]

I know a lot of people and many I consider friends, however I only have a few good close friends. One lives about 20 miles from me another about 30 and my best friend lives about 1500 miles away.

I'm sociable with my neighbors chatting with one in particular but just passing or while one of us is outside.

My kids all live close and stop by or call and I do the same. However none are here on a daily schedule which is fine as I know that they are busy with their families and lives. And in a way so am I.

When I bought my Harley and announced that I'd be making trips they all became a bunch of mother hens, insisting that I be careful, get a cell phone to be able to call if 'something' happened. One in particular was very concerned that it had been years since I'd ridden a motorcycle. I think Tc can vouch for my riding skills.

I told them all that I'd spent their inheritance and they'd better hope that when I died it wasn't on the bike so they could sell it to pay to give me a decent funeral. None of them thought it was funny but I did.

I watched my father die, I was the last person he saw on this earth, years later my younger brother had to give the order to take our mother off life support as that's what her living will required.

Both died with family beside them, I don't know if that made any difference to them or not, but it did allow our family members some sense of closure.

About all of my Stuff:

I've got a living will about life support etc; and my children have a list of things I want each to have. I've also left written instructions that if there is Any Item that I haven't delegated to a specific child and more than one wants it and they can't agree on who/then it is to be donated or sold to an outside party. Non of this fighting over some stupid 'that belonged to dad' BS.

I liked what Neil Miller's wife ended her writings about our beloved Neil with. I saved it as my signature. You will find it below.

[Euclid440]

My father-in law passed, at 90 after a fall and stroke. Unknown which happened first.

Before he passed for about a couple years he had dementia, that blossomed into full Alzheimer’s at the end, where he would be difficult and or sometimes completely out of it, to the point he could not answer the phone or turn on the TV, and the next day, be perfectly normal and cheery.

One thing we noticed, was that dehydration seemed to bring on bouts of dementia, and a simple bottle of water and a 15-minute rest, could snap him out of an episode. Almost like flipping a switch.

He had been “without a filter”, for much of his late years, and was difficult, and abusive to some, though he was never that way with me. Looking back on it now, it was the early stages of dementia.

A lot of what you describe sounds like, dementia and early stage Alzheimer’s symptoms. Much of what we used to call grumpy old man syndrome is just that. There are drugs that can be prescribed but they have side effects also.

If you know someone, you suspect symptoms of dementia, encourage them to drink more water. Doctors say most of us, don drink enough water anyway, seems like a simple thing, but it won’t hurt.

[Mike Blue]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ85Hep0kD0