Down the Rabbit Hole

Our family's final journey down the rabbit hole really began the summer of 2005, when Sissy and I had to remove our parents from the clutches of insanity that had become Life with Mac in The House on Laurie Street.

After many years of relative stability during which Mac's presence was actually helpful to our parents and us, he lost his job and could not find another. Mom lost her mind. Daddy lost his mobility. This was a bad, bad combination. A perfect storm, if you will, that came to a head around Father's Day, 2005.

As described elsewhere in this blog, three weeks of that summer were spent getting Mom and Daddy settled into, first, an assisted living facility, then a nursing home. Sissy and I had to operate around Mac, going into the house on secret reconnaissance missions in order to remove all the guns (this was during a period when Mac had begun "pretending" to shoot at people driving by on the street), as well as gather clothes and other items for their rooms.

After the gun removal trip, which was, as you might imagine, fraught with anxiety and the fear of being discovered, we went to visit Daddy. We told him what we had done. He asked, "Did you get the one out of the trunk of the car?" Shit. No. Now we had to go back. Which we did, but we did not find the gun. Did Mac have it? Would he use it? It was a very big loose end. Now on top of everything else, we were worried about him having a gun. (This gun was the one that was later discovered in one of the tackle boxes.)

Of course, once we had done all the legwork around getting Mom and Daddy out of the house and settled elsewhere, Mac was happy as a clam. He was free! One thing he felt particularly free about was acting as if the house was his. He immediately set about rearranging everything. He became quite comfortable. Yes, it was now his house, and Sissy and I had to act as if it were so. 

Over the next two years, he got into all sorts of dangerous and sketchy situations, and became involved with all manner of crazy and criminal people. Police were called, restraining orders filed, court hearings attended, and eviction notices served. However, he viewed none of it as a cautionary tale. He enjoyed it all. It was  fodder for his theories and self-righteousness. He would prevail over the forces against him! It was a very manic time.

Then shit started happening at the nursing home. Daddy fell and broke his hip. Mac was kicked out. Daddy died. And Mac completely derailed.

We know very little about his last ten months. His last conversations with me were pretty crazy and eventually devolved to the point where I couldn't talk to him anymore. He wasn't communicating with Sissy. And, according to Cap'n John, he was causing trouble for himself by hanging around with the wrong people. He was isolating from friends and family, never a good sign for a paranoid schizophrenic.

Then he died.

And six months later, Mom died. 

This is when I went down the rabbit hole and stayed for the next three years.

The House on Laurie Street, Pt. 4

So we sold the house and property to the Coach and his Wife. It was, as much as possible, a win-win outcome. Well, except for the house. They couldn't, apparently, let anyone they knew live in "that house." So the Coach, on the lookout for a way to get rid of it and look like a good guy, donated it to Habitat for Humanity. I've never had this confirmed, but it's always been my suspicion that the only reason they accepted it (they are not, after all, in the business of moving or rehabbing houses) was because it was donated by Maryville's royalty.

So the house was hacked up, jacked up, put on a trailer, and moved out to the edge of the field, next to the street. And there it sat. Month after month after month.

What Sissy and I learned through various channels, including Habitat for Humanity and the man on whose trailer the house sat, was this: the original plan was to move it to an empty lot adjacent to the field. This would have been relatively easy. The Trailer Man donated the materials needed to get the house ready to move, as well as the trailer, since it wasn't supposed to be a long and involved process. But then the person who owned the empty lot reneged on the deal. And there the house sat, all jacked up and no place to go.

Every lot that was investigated had one issue or another that prevented it from being a landing pad for the house. And as Trailer Man tried to tell everyone involved, moving a house isn't the same as moving a mobile home. It would require street closures and a police escort.

True to form, once donated, Coach washed his hands of the problem and started harassing Trailer Man about getting it off his property. The police harassed him, too, no doubt at Coach's "suggestion."

Of course, it's not like Trailer Man was in charge of, or responsible for, the situation. He wanted to get the house off of his trailer. He was losing money every day he couldn't use it. But Coach didn't care. So Trailer Man was left to his own devices in terms of finding some place where he could put the house, at least temporarily.

Then one day, the house was gone. I soon got word from a friend that she saw it sitting out in front of the farmer's co-op, down on 411. Sissy and I immediately went to see for ourselves. There it was. Sitting in the parking lot, next to another abandoned building. It looked forlorn. A perfectly good house sitting empty and unused. It pissed Sissy off.

And there it sat, for months, the Tyvek wrapping eventually starting to peel off, other little things beginning to fall apart. Fading, fading...

Fast forward.

One weekend, Sissy was supposed to drive over to Knoxville and we were going to hike out at Seven Islands. But when I woke up, I decided I wanted to go out to the trails at Tellico Lake instead. I hadn't been there before and even though she and Mr. Wizard had gone once, briefly, she wanted to explore the area more thoroughly. So I called her, changed plans, drove to Maryville and picked her up, and off we went.

Down 321, following directions because she and Mr. Wizard had come in from 411. We turn off 321 onto a road that cuts across between 321 and 411. We haven't gone but maybe a mile when I see a police car blocking the road up ahead. "Dammit," I say, but Sissy doesn't hear me. She's looking at the directions. "There's a police car blocking the road, Sissy. We can't go this way." She looks up and both of us, at the same time, see this:

What the...?! We know immediately that it is The House.

We gawk for a minute, and I take this photo. Sissy calls Mr. Wizard. "You'll never believe where we are and what we're looking at!" We marvel at the fact that the house had been moved from all the way over on 411, down and around to 321, and is now being moved back toward 411. We can't fathom how long it must've taken to get this far. Hours and hours, for sure. And now here it is, and here we were, staring at it.

I turn around, stopping next to the cop. Sissy rolls down her window. We ask what's going on. He doesn't know much, except that it's The Coach's house and it's getting moved down by the quarry. Sissy, bless her heart, says, "Actually it's our house. Our grandfather built it. We sold it to the Coach."

So, what do you think the chances were that we would end up at that particular place at that exact moment?

Lying in Wait

The truth is this: Mac could've lain in the kitchen a lot longer than he did if it weren't for Sissy. As previously mentioned, although newspapers and mail were piling up outside, The Coach and his Wife apparently didn't think to check in on him.

I'd stopped talking to him, him having broken the last straw with me several months before. I hadn't planned on never speaking to him again, but I needed a break from his nastiness and unwarranted accusations.

Sissy tried to maintain some contact with him but he made it very difficult. He wouldn't answer the phone and wouldn't return messages. We both knew he'd cracked but here's another truth: there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it.

She did finally get a hold of him once. She told him he needed to answer the phone or return calls. What if something happened to him? He was adamant that she was worrying needlessly, that nothing was going to happen to him. As he did so often when either of us demonstrated concern, he pooh poohed her.

Sometime a few days or a week or so after this call, Sissy's dog, Ruby, became gravely ill. Mac loved Ruby, so Sissy figured that even if he wouldn't call her back to talk to her, he would respond to a call about Ruby's illness. So she left a message. No response.

At this point, Sissy was just irritated. Days passed. She started saying things to friends at work like, "He's probably dead and the cat is eating him." She and I "joked," wondering how would we even know if he was dead? She couldn't believe, and neither could I, that he wouldn't call to find out how Ruby was doing. Then Ruby died. Now Sissy was pissed.

However, a few more days passed and Sissy's anger became mixed with worry.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, "Why didn't she just go over to the house and knock on the door?" Good question. Here's the answer: because Mac made it clear he didn't want either of us to ever just drop in on him. She did not want to deal with his anger, which he most assuredly would've unleashed on her had she shown up unannounced. Plus, we both knew he'd gone off his nut. He could be very scary.

Finally, however, worry overcame fear. It had been a couple of weeks since Sissy left the message about Ruby, probably four since she'd spoken to him. So one day (June 8, 2008, to be exact), when she and Mr. Wizard had to drop one of their cars off at a shop near The Farm, she asked Mr. Wizard to stop there with her on their way home. She figured Mac would be less volatile with him there.

She said as they got close to the driveway, they noticed all the newspapers piled up and the garbage cans sitting out. As they pulled up into the driveway next to the house, they noticed the smell. They knew.

They fearfully went to the back door off the carport. She opened the door and peered into the kitchen. She could see his feet sticking out from the hallway. For some unknown reason, Mr. Wizard felt compelled to go into the house. He looked at him. He was naked except for a shirt.

Sissy called the police.

We were later able to figure out, based on the fact that the mail went back to May 19th, that he had been lying there for about 3 weeks.

Crossing the Chasm

During his teenage years, Mac belonged to (was a founding member of?) a local spelunking, or caving, club. They explored existing caves and they discovered at least one system of caves in the area. There are many caves in E TN due to the abundance of limestone and underground water.

Mac had to be rescued once after he and another young man got trapped, suspended in mid-air for 24 hours, when their ropes got hung up, either as they were rappelling down or coming back up. He later told me the worst part was the fact that his caving partner was freaking out, talking the whole time about how they were going to die. Another caver, a high school teacher, did die in a caving accident around the same time.

Mac, being a thrill seeker and daredevil, loved spelunking.

I was fascinated with the equipment: helmets, head lamps that went on the helmets, nylon ropes, caribiners, heavy canvas clothes. I loved how everything was always muddy and smelled like damp earth.

For some reason, Mac thought it would be a good idea to take his mother and two younger sisters caving one day. For those of you who are asking, "Why not?" let me remind you that these were not commercial caves that had been prepped for the general public. Oh, no. Going caving with him involved being in very small spaces in the the pitch black, crawling through tiny openings, and walking crouched over through low tunnels.

And crossing a wooden plank that stretched above a deep, black hole. No lights except flashlights and head lamps. Did I mention above a deep, black hole? And that I was about seven?

As I recall, he had to carry me across. Piggyback. I was, as they say, scared s***less.

Needless to say, I never wanted to go caving with him again.

Many years later he admitted that he hadn't exercised the best judgment that day, bringing his mom and baby sisters caving.

Ya think?

Sk8er Grrl

In the 60's in Maryville, people were still allowed to burn leaves in their yards. We had one such fire when I was about five.

(One of my favorite stories around this time that I read over and over was about a neighborhood that held annual bonfires in the fall. All the leaves were raked and put into one huge pile. On this particular occasion, the local handyman snuck foil wrapped potatoes into the fire so that when it died down, everyone got the surprise of having baked potatoes.)

I don't remember the fire at all, but the next day I was outside playing in the yard. The ashes called to me. (No, this is not why I call myself Ash.) They looked so soft! So, into the remains of the fire I went, barefoot, of course, because that's how I always was.

The ashes were soft! Powdery. They felt good fluffing between my toes.

I walked around in there for several minutes until I got bored, at which time I left and started running around the yard. I'm not sure what I was actually doing, but one of my favorite activities was to run up and around the house as fast as I could until I got down to the lower yard at which point I would dive and roll then stand up and do it all over again.

Anyway, at some point I ended up in the front yard where my Aunt intercepted me. Whether or not she was reprimanding me, asking me to tell Mom something, or simply chatting, I don't know. What I do know is that at some point during the interlude, my feet began to hurt. I started kind of hopping from one foot to the next. This, naturally, aroused suspicion in my Aunt. I told her what I'd been up to. She took me home immediately.

OK, so I had burned the bottoms of my feet! I was able to walk on the ashes which were, apparently covering up burning embers, because the soles of my feet were so tough. I was able to run at top speed up and down our gravel driveway barefoot, and one of my personal challenges was to see how long I could stand on hot pavement in 90 degree weather. So I didn't feel the heat while I was walking around in the fire pit.

So why the title of this post, you ask? Wouldn't Firewalker have been more apropos? Well, maybe, but what I remember more than anything about this incident was this: because I couldn't walk and because I was not one to be able to sit still (the label ADHD hadn't been invented yet but if it had, I would've worn it proudly), I somehow got the idea to take one of Sissy's white leather indoor roller skates, sit on it, and scoot around the house. I remember quite clearly learning to turn corners and being able to whip around the house at a pretty good clip. I loved the sound of the wheels on the wood floor and linoleum.

I'm guessing everyone was relieved when I was able to walk again.

The Birds

One of my fondest, if creepiest, childhood memories involves the freezer in the basement and birds.

Mom was a birder. Although I only remember her actually watching birds once she and Daddy moved out to The Farm (when I was 21), I knew she was into birding long before that. She talked about birds she had seen, birds she wanted to identify. Plus, she had the books, Audubon's and Petersen's guides.

And every now and then, when Mom sent me downstairs to get some hamburger or steaks for dinner, I would find a frozen bird of some sort in the door of the freezer. Poor little thing, lying on its back, claws sticking straight up, eyes clouded over. Cold. Dead.

Of course I would pick it up, marvel at how light it was, feel its cold feathers against my hands, feel a little sadness for its death.

And wonder what the hell was up with my Mom.

When I was older, I finally asked her about this creepy habit. She told me they were all birds that had hit one of the windows and died and that she was saving them for identification purposes. It sounded logical at the time. It took me a while to start wondering a) why, if all she wanted to do was identify them, each one seemed to "live" in the freezer for months and months (and, quite frankly, none of them ever struck me as particularly exotic or hard to identify; in fact, some even I could identify), and b) what did she do with them once they were identified? I have no memory of any bird burials. Where did they go?

Of course, I eventually grew up and moved out of the house and Mom's habit became funny stories to tell my friends at college and a weird shared childhood memory for Sissy and I to bring up every now and again. That is, until about ten years ago.

I was living in town again and went to visit the folks. Mom wanted to show me something. She took me downstairs (for some reason, our freezers were always in the basement). Out of the freezer she brought a beautiful, dead, frozen hawk. It had, she said, hit a window.

We had some discussion about it, like what was she going to do with it. I don't remember what she said. I do remember walking away thinking, "I didn't make up those stories!"

Fast forward several months, when I'm getting ready to move away again. My friend, Rocky, is helping me move borrowed furniture back to The Farm. When we're in the basement, I say, "Let me show you something." I don't think I had ever shared Mom's habit with anyone. Little did I know, doing so would also provide me with a forum for sharing one of Daddy's habits with an outsider.

I take her to the freezer and open it. There is the hawk, wrapped in plastic. Unfortunately, it's no longer frozen because the freezer isn't working. Fortunately, it's apparently not been too long, because the bird hasn't started decaying yet. I'm not sure what to do. It's Mom's bird. I put it back, and we go upstairs.

I decide I need to report the situation to Daddy and let him deal with it. I'd learned in the seven months I'd been living back in the area that, although they were all incapacitated in various ways (Mom's Alzheimer's was in full swing; Daddy's Parkinson's was, too; and Mac was in blissful denial about everything), they did not want me sticking my nose where it didn't belong.

So as we are getting ready to leave, we go into the living room where Daddy is in his rightful place in the recliner.

"Daddy? I went to show Rocky the hawk but the freezer downstairs isn't working."

"Why, there's nothing wrong with that freezer!"

End of story.

I was so glad to have a witness to this. It was the story of my childhood: if you deny it, it won't be true.

All Jacked Up

The house and property were sold. The weekend the deal was sealed, both our Realtor and the Coach happened to be in New York, her for a much-deserved vacation, him for the opening of a Big Movie in which he had a role as himself. (It was actually a movie with an actress that I love and it was a movie that I loved, in spite of his part in it.)

Time passes. The house just sits there, all fixed up yet empty.

Then one day in November, I'm driving by and I see that the house has been jacked up, literally:

I tell Sissy, and we make plans to explore more thoroughly.

When we arrive, she frets a bit about the possibility that the Coach or the Wife will drive by and see us. I say, "So what? If they do, we'll just say we were interested in what's going on, act as privileged as they do." So down the road we go. Here's some of what we saw:

It was shocking, to say the least.

Sure enough, as we're tramping around in the red clay taking photographs, down the road comes a car. It pulls into the driveway and the passenger rolls down the window. We walk out to greet them and immediately realize the Wife is driving. We assume the passenger is either her mother or the Coach's.

I step up to say hi and remind her who I am (I call myself Ash, I say, but you know me as Laurie). The Wife has met both of us on more than one occasion. She acknowledges me, but for some reason, not Sissy. And when Sissy says something about wanting to take photographs, that we have relatives that would be interested in seeing them (meaning our cousins who all spent a lot of time at The Farm when our, and their, grandparents lived there), she does not respond with an, "Of course! That makes perfect sense." She basically ignores what Sissy says and turns to me, complaining about how hard it's all been, dealing with the house, and says it's such a shame that Sissy spent all that money and time to fix it up. The conversation is weird, but because I think she's weird in general I don't think too much of it. Until, as she and her passenger drive away, Sissy turns to me and says, "She had no idea who I am." Dumbstruck, I realize she's right.

The House on Laurie Street, Pt. 3

To continue, our relationship with the Coach and his Wife was complicated. I'll speak for myself when I say that I feel both enormous gratitude and enormous enmity toward them. It's been a long journey to being able to focus on appreciation more than irritation and suspicion.

APPRECIATIONS
They eventually bought the property at a fair price at a time when the housing market was tanking.
We know they will not develop the property as long as they live there, therefore, Mom's spring will be left intact, no trees will be cut down, and no road will make its way through.

IRRITATIONS
Their behavior throughout the negotiation process was condescending, arrogant, privileged, and petty.
Their Good Neighbor Act was just that.
The Wife behaved as if the house was something horrible on the bottom of her shoe.

SUSPICIONS
The Coach hired a P.I. to "keep an eye on" Mac, thus fueling his paranoia.

In the years following the sale of the house, I've had the opportunity to meet people who know the Coach and his Wife, who've had DEALINGS with them. Let me just say, our take on their attitudes and behavior have been confirmed many times over.

This Ain't No "The Notebook"

Here's the deal with Alzheimer's: it doesn't just affect the memory. That is a great misconception of the disease. Over time, it affects EVERY aspect of the neurological system.

So Mom didn't just forget things. She didn't just need reminders. Her brain got very confused. She did weird things like put Daddy's pajamas in the freezer, or the cat food in her underwear drawer and a dish of bananas on the floor for the cat. She couldn't recognize or name familiar objects, like keys. Like ME. She began substituting odd words when she couldn't think of the right one. Her speech became unintelligible. Eventually, she really couldn't even speak.

Her balance was affected. After she broke her hip, even though she healed quickly and physically could've walked, her mind could no longer send proper instructions and she stopped being able to walk. She eventually became unable to move herself at all, really. She always slumped to one side when she was sitting up. She wasn't able to adjust her position, while sitting or lying down. Her only movement became the "worrying" she would do with her fingers and the hem of the blanket.

She stopped being able to go to the bathroom. She couldn't feed herself.

For a long time, she was able to smile and turn her head for me to give her a kiss. It was clear she recognized us.

Eventually, however, her body became an empty shell and, in her last days, she stopped responding at all.

The End of An Era: A Time Line

After 24 years of living in The House on Laurie Street, it all comes down to this:

June 16th, 2005
Daddy fell. Mac, instead of helping him, leaves him on the floor and calls Sissy. He says, in his evil voice, "I can't take the little boy who cried wolf anymore!" Sissy goes over to the house and calls an ambulance. She goes with Daddy to the emergency room, and takes mom with her.

June 19th, Father's Day
Maggie goes over to the house to check on the situation. Not good. Calls me. Tells me I need to come right away, we have to get them out of the house. Mac has, in Daddy's own words, "Gone off his nut."

June 21st
I arrive.

June 22nd
I visit three assisted living facilities. Sissy and I are unaware of just how bad things have gotten and don't know that both Mom and Daddy are far beyond the point of being able to live only with assistance.
We go to The Farm (a.k.a., The House on Laurie Street) to talk with Daddy. We tell him that he and Mom can't stay there anymore. Mac can't take care of them. We've been looking at places for them to go. He tells us he'll make sure we don't get a penny if we continue with our plans.

June 23rd
I have a horrible conversation with Mac. I call him, hoping to set up a lunch in order to talk about the situation. He tells me he's busy. I say I'd really like to talk to him. He sneers, "Oh, I KNOW." He tells me I am trying to ruin his life.

June 24th
Mac calls. Doesn't realize it's 1:00 a.m.
Mac calls again later in the morning, sounding just as normal as you please. We make plans for a sibling dinner Sunday night.

June 25th
Maggie and I visit assisted living places. Agree we like the one up the hill from The Farm the best.

June 26th
Mac calls at 9:00 a.m. asking Sissy to "deal with this crisis." Daddy wants to go to the emergency room. Sissy and I call the ambulance. We get him settled, finally, by 4:00.
We meet Mac for dinner. Oh, HELL NO he's not normal! Dinner is a narrowly averted catastrophe. He's manic, paranoid, aggressive, and extremely emotionally labile. Nominally friendly toward us, but the situation is dicey. Sissy and I are terribly nervous. He targets a man sitting at dinner with his wife and kids, making threatening gestures and loud comments. Somehow we manage to get through dinner and out of the restaurant before he gets arrested. We realized later we should've called the police ourselves.

June 27th
While Daddy is in the hospital, Lily Tomlin (that's who she looks like!) makes a home visit to evaluate Mom. She gives the go ahead. She must've also met Daddy at the hospital, although I don't remember this.

June 28th
We set up Mom's and Daddy's rooms. Mom moves in.

June 29th
Mom falls and cuts her head. Sissy and I meet her at the Emergency Room at 2:30 a.m.

June 30th
Daddy informs us he wants a joint room with Mom, and luckily there is one available, so we spend the day setting up their apartment.
Sissy stays over that night with Mom.

July 1st
Daddy arrives from the hospital on a stretcher. Ms. Tomlin is shocked and tells us this is not a good sign. She expected him to be ambulatory. In order for this to work, he needs to be able to keep an eye on, and help with, Mom.

July 2nd
Ms. Tomlin calls. It isn't going to work.

July 3rd
Day spent at the nursing home, meeting with people and filling out paperwork.

July 6th
We're given the green light to move Mom and Daddy to the nursing home. Mom will be on the locked unit for people with Alzheimer's, Daddy will be in a different area of the same floor.
When we arrive at the assisted living facility, there is an ambulance out front. It's for mom. She goes to the hospital. We take Daddy to the nursing home.

The next few days are spent cleaning out the apartment at the assisted living place and getting their rooms set-up at the nursing home. Mom spends a couple of days in the hospital. I no longer remember why she was there.

I do remember when she arrived at the nursing home. It was lunch time, and while Sissy dealt with various and sundry things, I went with her to the cafeteria and tried to have lunch with her. She was very unhappy. She slumped and couldn't understand and follow my instructions to sit up. She asked about her parents and going home. It was horrible.

And where was Mac throughout all this, you may ask? Gone crazy. That's where.

The House on Laurie Street, Pt. 2

Otherwise known as The House That Granddaddy Built...

For those of you that don't already know this, my given name is Laurie. I may have mentioned that somewhere in an earlier post. I forget.

So, during this time of year, eight years ago, Sissy and I begin our quest to get Mom and Daddy out of the house and into, first, an assisted living facility, then, second, a nursing home. (More about that in another post.) After we'd accomplished this no small feat, this left Mac living in the house for the next three years until his Death By Natural Causes. You already have an idea of what transpired during this time.

Sometime during the last year or so of his life, Mac began getting into conflicts with the Coach, his Wife, and their property Caretaker. Mac accused the Coach of flying surveillance planes over the house. The Caretaker accused Mac of threatening her son and standing out at the street, pretending to shoot at passersby. The Wife called Sissy in a tizzy.

Mac may have been crazy, but his delusions always held truth and, in this case, as we have seen, he really was under surveillance, just not by plane.

Mac also accused the Coach of acting as if the property was already his. He was not wrong there, either. Once when Sissy had hired a man to deal with some downed trees on the property (cut them up and haul them off), Coach appeared. He walked straight onto the property and up to the man demanding to know what he was doing. He wanted to make sure the trees were not getting cut down.

Anyway, long story short, at some point the Coach called a meeting between himself, Mac, and the Chief of Police. I kid you not. Apparently they stood out on the lawn and came to some sort of agreement. About what, I do not know. Mac, however, claimed to be fine with the whole scenario. I've come to suspect he was, once again, biding his time.

I digress and, I suspect, repeat, but as I started off saying, our relationship with the Coach and his Wife was Complicated.

The House on Laurie Street, Pt. 1

When I last wrote about the house, Sissy, our realtor, and I were coming up with various scenarios in terms of selling it and the property. As you know if you read that post, our bitchy dream was to put in a trailer court, special for the Coach and his wife. However, as the property was by then in the city limits (when my grandparents bought it, it was still in the county), no trailer court was allowed.

Let me stop and clarify: our family's relationship with the Coach and his wife was "complicated," to put it mildly. (And for my E TN readers, this Coach was eventually fired from A Large University and given a $6 million severance package, just in case you were wondering to whom I was referring.)

When they became neighbors, my parents were embroiled in a battle with the city: the city was planning to build a road right through the middle of their property, through the fields and Mom's spring, as an exit road from the newly built school on the hill. This was killing Daddy. And they were going to lose the fight. Then, lo and behold, the Coach bought the property behind them, which included land through which the road was to go, and suddenly, all plans to build a road were off.

The Coach and his family built a home and moved in and soon bought the field behind them. The city planted a hundred or more Cedars by the road above this piece of land so they would have privacy from the traffic on the road and the greenway that bordered their property.

Remember: The Coach and his wife were IMPORTANT PEOPLE.

(One time during a visit not long after the Coach and his Wife had moved in, Mom shared a newspaper article that was an interview with the wife. In it, she lamented how challenging it was, how much responsibility it was, to be a Celebrity in a Small Town.)

A few years later, my uncle sold them the 13 acres (once part of The Farm) adjacent to their property for a song. Soon thereafter, the Wife built an "office" on the property, a 2,000+ square foot "barn." I guess she needed a place from which she could organize all her charity work for The Little People.

Oh, have I mentioned that The Coach and his wife were Good Neighbors over the years, sending cards and fruit baskets for the holidays, stopping by for visits, etc.? They even visited Daddy in the hospital and nursing home.

But they had a plan, you see. All that was left to complete their Kingdom was the 7 acres on which sat The House on Laurie Street. And we knew it.

Fortunately for us, they mistook Daddy's delight at having a Big Football Coach's family as neighbors for stupidity. They thought we were Country Bumpkins. Boy, were they in for a surprise.

Playing Catch Up

After re-reading all previous posts for the first time in five years, I've reached the conclusion that I will most likely repeat myself sometimes in these newer posts, since I already have in the last two! The beauty of it is, since 2008 I have entered the Crone phase of my life, if you get my drift, and I can blame memory lapses on that.

However, I will do my level best to fill in and add to, rather than re-hash.

Previously

Let me back up a bit to the years leading up to Mac's death. A little backstory, if you will. In 1985, the year after I'd gone to college up north, Mac showed up on Mom's and Daddy's doorstep, in a state. Someone was after him and he needed a place to hide. Of course, they let him move in. There he stayed for the next 23 years.

Over the course of the six years after he moved in, he became increasingly ill, and his behavior became increasingly frightening and unpredictable. He covered the window in his room, sealed off the connecting door, and created an aluminum foil contraption around the T.V (why does paranoid schizophrenia seem to often include the use of aluminum foil?). He had become obsessed with Oral Roberts.

During one visit when I was attempting to make contact with Mac (that's really what it was like-trying to make contact, not converse), he sat on the edge of his bed, playing and re-playing a recording of a phone call he had made to the Oral Roberts headquarters, and watching a taped broadcast of one of the shows. His attention to me was minimal and hostile. One of his favorite things to say to me when I tried to make contact with him was, with a sneer, "Oh, that's right. You love me," stretching out the word love to indicate his complete contempt for me.

I learned many years later, during a period of remission, that his delusions involved the belief that everyone could read his thoughts. Therefore, when I asked questions like, "What's wrong?" or "What can I do?" he believed that I was totally fucking with him. After all, I could read his thoughts so of course I knew what was wrong but was just pretending to not know, and pretending to care. I also learned that one of the things he was doing when listening to the tape recording and watching the show was looking for evidence that "they" had infiltrated his thoughts.

Toward the end of those six years, he became the Classic Crazy Person. He stopped bathing regularly. He wore a wool knit cap in 90 degree weather (paranoid schizophrenia also seems to often involve the wearing of these knit hats-to keep the thoughts in? Or out?). He talked to himself, sometimes argued with invisible people, and became increasingly angry. He slammed doors, yelled at Mom and Daddy, and went screeching down the road in the car, screaming out the window. I think it was during this time that he was arrested, or at least picked up, once or twice for causing disturbances in public, including indecent exposure.

Things finally began coming to a head when he started behaving in a threatening manner toward Mom and Daddy. (It was probably at this time that Daddy began sleeping with a pistol under his pillow.) Mom managed to get a court order stating that the next time he threatened them, they could call the police and have him picked up. (Tennessee has no "5150" law like California.) The day finally came and Mom called the police. Two officers came, one of whom had apparently actually had some training for a situation such as this, thank God. Daddy came home from work. Maggie left work and went over. And Mom's brother went over. I did not join them because I was in New York.

As I understand it, after talking with Mac, the officers agreed to let him drive himself to the hospital for evaluation. And the hospital agreed to let him go home if he took his meds and went for outpatient treatment. So back home he went, where, for the next year, he "bided his time," as he later told me.

Five Years Later

A lot has happened since Hyde, from now on known by his real nickname, Mac (after all, no need to protect the innocent anymore), died unexpectedly in May of 2008. For one thing, Mom died six months after that. Then I quit teaching and moved home for almost two years, then back to California, and now I'm getting ready to move home again, for a final time.

Mac's death is still unsettling and mysterious. Many questions remain unanswered. Jeckle (from here on known by her real nickname, Sissy) and I even made a trip to the police station a couple of years ago to meet with the lead detective to try and get some questions answered. We left with little more than we already knew.

As I mentioned in entries back in 2008, Mac had made it abundantly clear that, because he felt he had missed out on much of his life due to his mental illness, he wanted to live as long as possible, by any means necessary. He was very pro life support and heroic measures. It never made sense to us that he did not call anyone for help.

Also, I discovered during my time with "Cap'n John" that Mac had, in fact, been under surveillance by a private investigator hired, Sissy and I assumed, by his neighbor, a prominent and influential (and entirely untrustworthy) citizen (previously referred to in these posts as the Coach). I was told by Cap'n John that Mac was coming and going at all hours and sometimes disappearing for days on end and that this, for some reason, prompted his neighbor's "concern" and desire to keep an eye on him. Then why, Sissy and I have wondered many times, did no one notice the fact that newspapers were piling up by the mailbox and that Mac had not left the house for almost three weeks? Why did no one alert the authorities? We smell a BIG RAT, a.k.a. The Coach, or, The Prominent and Influential Citizen. Unfortunately, small community = Big Secrets.

We know that Mac wasn't right in the head, and that he often got involved in dangerous things with dangerous people, but something about his death just isn't right.