not my photograph...
Observations made of the elderly populations, translated…
The elevator door slid open, the seventh floor is here. There’s that familiar clinking sound, and yet, for a split second, I thought I heard the stacked up boxes, falling down.
Who lives at Apartment 7-1? Every time that someone got into the elevator and pressed the seventh floor, I couldn’t help, but sizing the individual up. And, all who went to the seventh floor, although not dressed up to the nines, but were at least, very clean, and of course, there were moments of “If this person didn’t come here by accident” moments, but, the individual who stopped at the seventh floor always stepped out, without any hesitations, with NO desires, it seemed, to become stagnant as they exited the elevators.
I’d moved into this building for five years now, there had been three companies of men who’d managed the securities. Every time the new securities companies started working, there would be this huge clean-off of the boxes from apartment 7-1. “There were anonymous tips by other residents”, “the Fire Department Will Come for a Safety Inspection”, any ways, the managing committee and the neighbors would coax, in all manners possible, having everybody take everything inside their own places, and time and time again, the twenty-something year-old building looked cleanly, like newly built, it’s just 7-1, unmoved. After a few warnings, the managing committee had cleaned up the things, but not long thereafter, as the elevator arrived at the seventh floor, there would be, more boxes stacked up, like how mold took up residence in the closed-in bathrooms. All the way, from the walls, grown up to be the height of an adult person, reaching outward, from the walls, toward the elevators.
“Hoarder”, the elevator doors shut all of a sudden, the ancient elevator shook as it’d rolled upward, slowly, before the eighth floor light came on, J made a simple deduction, “My grandmother used to be like that too.”, the number on the top of the elevator jumped to the right, and the number increased.
“So this, is hoarding.”, I’d recently read about it online, I recall that it has something to do with old age, loneliness, and insecurities.
“Don’t know when it’d started happening, she’d gotten intrigued by the home shopping networks, then, shopping online. I’d heard grandma on the phones with the sellers, they’d talked like they’d known one another their whole lives. And, the boxes after boxes of things delivered to the inside of the house from the storage room, into the hallways, then, toward the kitchens, the living rooms, a lot of the boxes weren’t even opened. The light and the sun was diluted by the dirt-colored cardboard boxes, and we’d had to go sideways walking in her house. Going to visit her, me, mom, dad, and grandma, there were just, the four of us, but, in the dimly lit place, it felt like a dozen people, and, our shadows were on the boxes, making the house feel cramped, but more silent as well.” His eyes looked up, stared, at the floor indicator, showing the white underneath his eyeballs.
“Then, do you all, go to see her often?”
J shook her head, “It’s too crowded, I can’t even, get in”. he’d lowered his eyes, and the line on his forehead relaxed too. As the elevator stopped, it’d made, that clinking sound again, before the doors were completely opened, he’d, slid out, sideways.
So, this, is why the elderly have the tendencies to HOARD their things, because they feel lonely, and felt compelled, to surround themselves with a ton of things, so they don’t feel that alone, in their big and empty houses, this is the psychological needs of the older adults, not being taken care of…