Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Happy Hump Day: Alas, the Edition

My mother's house is currently a crime scene.
And while I would love to turn that opening into a trompe l'oeil of words--just kidding! a theoretical crime scene! all the world a metaphor!--alas, I cannot. (Alas is something you get to say when your mother's house is a crime scene.) No, there is actual yellow police tape cordoning off my mother's living room, which is kind of ironic considering someone died in there. Get it? Living room? Alas, again, alas. I am not cut out for this type of tragedy, a church giggler had I ever gone to church, the girl in the movie theater who turns to her friend to ask if she, too, saw the goof, blood on the car windshield seconds before the blast.

Nothing is real.

I did not know the woman. She was a caregiver of Allen's, a woman provided by the county. She was slightly broken, strange, and so she had been living upstairs. (Allen likes to collect strange broken people, pretty leaves, in the last three years he has given me four hand mixers that he found discarded on the side of the street and yet still I buy cookie dough in tubes). Maybe I met this woman, I don't know--the caregivers, they come and go so quickly, most of them somehow damaged or Fijian and large, never damaged Fijians or damaged large people, just damaged people and then other people who just so happen to be from Fiji and thus rather large. What I do know is that this woman was found lying on the floor with her head in a bucket. What I do know is that she was dead, is dead, the verb tense a little tricky, although no one knows how or why or exactly when she died, the who and the where the only bright spots in the case. (Scant whisperings that she had been stealing prescription drugs, a prison record, Medicare not well known for vetting or caring, the living room now taped off yellow until the official autopsy report.)

And that is all I have to say about that, its notability not so much in the grim details of a story as in the lack of one. It is Wednesday and my mother's house is a crime scene. These things happen. Or they do not, the world cleanly divided, it would seem, between those people who tell these stories and those that live them. Get it? Live? Alas, poor Yorick! All morning I have listened to the gutteral hack of my neighbor coughing, my other neighbor playing Mozart on the piano. It is my intention to stay on the side of the teller.

And if that wasn't Hump Day enough for you, I give you this: Absurd, I'm telling you. The world is full of it.
I could not make this shit up if I tried.
xoxo,
Susannah

18 comments:

krista said...

i tend to get stuck on the details. and right now, it's a bucket.
A BUCKET? HEAD IN? does that happen on purpose or is it just life's way of drawing attention to the matter at hand, pulling focus.
sometimes i think how we live our lives so full of words and doughnuts and children's programming and it could all end with our head in a bucket.

cathi said...

Wow....if that story doesn't wake a person up....! My front porch was once a crime scene when a young man tried to rob a neighbor and was shot in the process..He dropped dead on my doorstep...I was like a cat pacing around my house as that was the first time I had seen a dead body. The police officers were standing over him with their coffee and donuts..

Anonymous said...

From: Jackie Chan look-alike:

I would make a comment but my progeria, black lung and hydrophobia prevent me from thinking clearly or typing.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's the Fujian underworld. Don't tell anyone I said that.

Sarah Ring said...

Krista took the question right out of my mouth... Her head was in a bucket? For some reason I feel compelled to ask for more.

Oh Brother! said...

Kick the bucket... more common than you think. In this family alone, this is our second go-'round with a dead person face-first in a bucket, the first being our Grandfather. Heart attack. Two points. Bucket.

True story.

-bro

Petunia Face said...

Wait a fricken' minute Oh Brother of mine: I thought our grandfather died of a heart attack peacefully in his sleep?? Or is that something you all lied to me about, the youngest, like the time I was told Wanda the cat had been given to a good home? For that matter, when Roo the Australian Shepard went to live on a ranch??? I'm beginning to see a pattern here and must go lie down to list all the family pets peacefully deceased, the relatives no longer. Shit.

As for the bucket on this particular dead person--we don't know. Was she throwing up? Simply fell that way? What does one do with a bucket in her room anyway?

Mrs. Blandings said...

Not to make light of this poor woman's situation - the most interesting things seem to happen around you.

Simply Mel {Reverie} said...

You are so right, you can't make this shit up! Crime scenes, buckets with human heads inside, and whacked exercise junkies! Damn...your head must spin on a daily basis!

But on a lighter note, don't you find the Fijians to be rather happy and kind people? All the time!

Kacey said...

I know i should be questioning about the caregivers death,but my most pressing question is.."Is that really your moms house?" my gut says no that would be too amazing but my heart is hoping yes,because if so than that is soooo cool.its like something out of a fairy tail or peter pan,something surreal and magical and crazy all at the same time.O.k. ill be sitting and waiting and wondering,here on my stolen day off from school that i didnt deserve but needed to keep my sanity.K

Kacey said...

Haha I just went back and read my post that I didnt proofread before publishing and I said fairy tail,too funny!

Petunia Face said...

Kacey--that would totally be my mom's house if she lived on a bayou, but no, it's not. Click on the pic for the link. :)

Simply Mel--Spot on about the Fijians. I think they work as caregivers because they are prone to kindness, and then they cannot believe that as a culture we need caregivers, that our own families don't do all the work.

Mrs. Blandings--I hesitated slightly before writing this post because this IS the death of a woman. But there seem to be such strange details that keep emerging that make me feel less sorry for her, that turn the story into one to be told as if it is a cartoon almost.

xo all!
S

Petunia Face said...

God damn, the death toll is mounting.

Oh Brother, lay it straight--did Houdini Turtleini REALLY escape through our backyard, or did he just kick the bucket like so many others???

Judy said...

She wasn't a very nice person sad to say and we were going to have the Devil of a time getting her to move out (she'd already moved out quite a few of our possessions including a large stash of Allen's drugs) but not only do we have the dead body with, yes, head in a bucket, and crime scene tape to contend with but also the issue of the Fijian family who will not occupy the same house as recently deceased. I can't seem to find out what has to be done to make it "O.K." Allen no longer gets to invite people to live in the house. I no longer have any faith in the County's caregiver screening. For the record, lacking autopsy results, we're pretty sure COD was a combo of purloined narcotics and alcohol...though the edge of the bucket against her carotid may actually be the murder weapon.
And your Bro is right. GrandDaddy's demise was from a massive MI but not in his sleep...rather in his den with the unfortunate wastecan.
And I WISH that were my house! Actually, I wish for almost any house right now that doesn't include yellow crime scene tape as decor. This just puts the real back in surreal in my life because truth really is way more fantastical than fiction it seems.

Love,
Mom

ZDub said...

CAH-RAP.

This is whacked out.


Hang in there, Judy.

Brandi at Duel Living said...

Ok, I know that a woman has died...moment of silence...and...I want to be a part of your family. It's pure entertainment. Joy...mixed with little death...but interesting death...death that kicks the shit outta boring ol' normal death. And by the way...I wonder if all of your old family pets are on the farm and with a nice new family making babies with all of my ol' pets...Sunny...Sunny's Lunch...Shep...Lizzy Borden? Let's hope.

Alexsandria said...

...like a paint bucket or a mop bucket?

Anonymous said...

Judy please start a blog.

Weitzell4 said...

W.O.W....
I feel a bit guilty getting my entertainment reading about someone's death, only a bit.