Okay, it’s the last day of March and I’m starting to write this new blahg.
You would not believe what a month, or rather two months since the last blahg, I have had. It’s been rough and busy as opposed to the old rough and ready cartoon. You wouldn’t believe what has happened but I’m going to write this blahg with some faith that you will accept what I am telling you as fact. It won’t be pretty…much like the photo to the right showing how much I have aged over this last month…or more.
This blahg was going to be singularly about my mother. I’ve written here before about her health and the struggles I have had to make sure she has had proper care. The biggest struggles have been first to get her to take some responsibility for her own care and medication and second to have all my siblings on board about her care and medication. That last effort has not been easy because I’m the one who had been taking care of business the most and complaining about the lack of effort on my siblings’ part(s). To be fair, two of my brothers live out of town; with one of them living in the USA. If you had forgotten, I live in Canada. To make a long story short, back in February we all met, except the brother living state-side, to talk about my mother. It was a Tuesday evening, which is significant, and we managed to come up with a plan to take some more stress off of me and to make sure the others knew exactly what should be done regarding my mother and father. I walked away from that meeting feeling hopeful that things would change. Little did I know that three days later, the ceiling would fall in…or the ice would drop. Read on for an explanation.
What should be clearly understood is that my parents live in a two story house that is heated by oil. I have, or maybe have not, mentioned that my friend Bryan lives with my parents and really was my eyes and ears in that house. The key word in that last sentence is “was“. Three days after the Henderson children met to discuss our mother, something unimaginable happened. There had been a slight warming in the weather and all of the snow and ice that was on the roof began to melt. I wish I had taken pictures of the roof before all of this happened because you wouldn’t have believed the size and thickness of the ice and icicles. So, there was a thaw and you can guess what happened next.
My mother called me later that day, around 6:30, to say that they had no heat in their house. I called my brother Todd to go by the house because I’m thirty minutes away and he’s closer. He called me later to say that the oil tank was empty. I thought that was odd because the tank had been filled earlier that week. I called the oil company who delivered the oil to see if the tank really had been filled. Needless to say, I got into an argument with the manager of the company who tried to tell me someone must have stolen the oil from the tank. It was not a pleasant conversation because we basically called each other liars. Shortly after that conversation, Todd called me back to say that he had discovered that a large chunk of ice from the roof had fallen and landed on the oil filter and had severed the filter and line from the tank. Over 800 liters of oil had spilled into the ground. I wish I had known that before I had called the oil company.
The next few days were a flurry of phone calls and meetings. I had to meet with two different insurance adjusters, engineers, a safety and standards agent, as well as numerous emails and texts to my siblings regarding what had happened. My mother was immediately relocated to my brother Dan’s house while Dad and Bryan stayed in the house. It was so cold that Dad eventually went to stay with my sister and Bryan came to stay with me. In fact, Bryan stayed with me until this past Sunday (more than a month) until he eventually moved in with his niece. There was a short period of 4 days while my mother also stayed with me while Dan was having surgery on his foot.
During that short time that my mother was here, I managed to track down a house rental in Belleville and worked with Dan and my sister Wanda to arrange to have furniture moved in to that house. Eventually my parents were reunited in this house and everything has gone well there. I was still dealing with an insurance adjuster who took almost the full month to get some compensation for my parents. Their insurance policy will cover the cost of their current location but getting the cheque for the expenses took some doing. Eventually the engineers came back and said my parents’ old house would have to be torn down because oil had seeped under the foundation and the garage and there was no way to remove it without demolishing those structures. Mom was in a bit of a panic over it but hey, they’ll get a new house built after the soil is removed and remediated. It will probably be a year before everything is all done and the new house built. The cost of the remediation has been estimated to be around one million dollars. Who knew?
So, the past month has been busy with all kinds of meetings and salvaging belongings from the old home. Eventually it was determined that all furniture and mattresses would have to be replaced because oil fumes cannot be cleaned from these items. Also, their refrigerator and freezer were written off because the oil fumes get into the coils and can be released again when these items are relocated to a new house. I’m still working on itemizing all of these things so we can get proper compensation. We’re also dealing with a panicked neighbor because the oil has also migrated to her yard. I’ve been assured by the insurance company that the cost of remediation to her yard will be covered by my parents’ policy. I’d cross my fingers but then it would be hard to type.
Well, that’s been my life. Add to it that I suffered a serious computer hard-drive failure and had to work hard with several programs and a new hard-drive to restore my computer. I’ve always preached the importance of backing up data but I had been behind in my back ups. That won’t happen again. I think I was running on fumes myself up until this week but I managed to get through it all. Now you know why there hasn’t been a blahg for a while.
My parents’ old house has finally been emptied by some helpful contractors paid for by the insurance company. Last week, I went through the house and took some video. It’s sad to see what’s left but I’m going to post that video here.
You will probably notice that this blahg is not filled with images and music like my previous blahgs. I had intended to just do a blahg about my mother’s health and include a great song by Deb Talan. I think I will still include that song but it probably won’t have the same meaning with most of this blahg being primarily about what happened to the house. The songs is called “My Mother Now” and is taken from a CD entitled “Deb Talan Live at Finney Chapel, May 3, 2003.” I think it’s a great song and certainly sums up what we should all feel about our mothers.
Tags: False Ducks, Oil Spill, Scott Henderson