Life
hands many of us solvable problems that eventually settle down. A sore throat
that eases after sipping hot tea laced with lemon and honey. A car repair setting back the budget for
several months. A job loss batters you down for years. If you have family and
close friends, you rely upon their experiences, emotional support, and
sometimes financial help to recover and move forward.
Over
the years, I cannot remember a time when life handed us an obstacle that we had
to handle all alone. As isolating as the caregiver years felt, we still had
each other to turn to at the end of each day. In recent months, life has plowed
into some of my single friends and family members. An unexpected illness, a
slow recovery from surgery, or an overwhelmed and overworked emotional pounding
pummeled people I love into a pulp. Always reluctant to ask for help, they put
out tentative, subtle signs that events have pulled them underwater. Caught up
in my own ups and downs, I missed my own brother’s growing need for relief.
My
brother, challenged by both physical and learning differences, structures his
day with routines. He spends his life in a “rinse and repeat” cycle. His work
requires the same things daily. He buys the same groceries every week. He pays
his bills in person and often in cash when he can. He relies on television for
entertainment and news. Last winter, he convinced me to skip our usual trips to
his house—he was sick with a stomach bug and wanted rest, and then his job, for
several months, required overtime that meant working either extra hours or even
extra days. He insisted that he was fine, just tired and not up to visitors.
Eventually,
he ran out of excuses to delay our visit, and February found us descending into
his darkened home. He hadn’t replaced light bulbs in each room. His clean
laundry piled high in his bedroom while dirty laundry took over part of his
garage. He had handled getting a new thermostat for his air conditioner, but
his car’s ENGINE light warned of trouble. When we tried to shower that night,
only ice cold water came out. He’d lived without hot water for many months.
We
sat down and made a list and plowed through most of it together. That’s when
his “aloneness” hit home. All of the chores, big or small, fall onto him. With
his extended working hours over several months, he simply gave up on tackling
anything but keeping his clothes clean. Together, we hung and folded, sorted
and tossed. Together, we took his car in for its repairs. Usually, he walks home
from the repair shop. What a luxury to have someone there to drive him home! As
a family, we swept and mopped his floors, took out an oversized bush near his
front door, and stripped and remade all of his beds. One working weekend with
three people reset his household chores.
His
bathroom, though, required more work. The bolt holding the toilet in place had
stripped. My scrub brush with Barkeeper’s Friend erased the mildew, but all of
the caulk needed to be removed and replaced. The popcorn ceiling over his tub
flaked, and every fixture showed its age. We broke down this room’s work into three
parts: plumber repairing the toilet first for sanitary reasons; new caulk and
paint that we can do; replacing all of the fixtures and the hot water heater
(plumber again).
Arriving
at the house this last weekend, we found the toilet repaired and the mildew
completely gone. I “watered” the ceiling to make the popcorn easier to remove.
While my husband sliced through the old stuff, caulked the tub, and repainted
the room including a touchup of the tub’s exterior, I partnered with my brother
to streamline his linen closet to only the sheets and towels he uses, bagging
away old sets of sheets for donations.
This
next week, he will call his plumber to get prices for his hot water heater and
possibly updating all of the twenty-year-old fixtures, including the light. If
all of this is within the budget, he’ll get things fixed. We discussed the
importance of having hot water again being more important than updating the
shower head, faucets and lights. We made pledges to one another that he will
let us know when things go wrong, but I know there are many things around him
that he simply doesn’t notice as needing attention. I left with a new list of “Must
Do” already started. However, he had maintained all of the housework we’d
helped him with from the previous visit—no clean laundry piled high or dirty laundry
stacked in the garage, no un-swept or un-mopped floors. If we keep on a regular
schedule to provide extra hands on working weekends, all should be well.
Copyright 2025 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
