Oma Surveys the Damage

Oma Hobbit has finally gotten to see her house after the flood of last week. It's not pretty. I was hoping the step up from her garage into her house would have been enough to keep the water out of the living areas of her home, but it was not to be. The water rose even higher than that. All of her carpets and furniture are ruined. Her house is going to have to be gutted and all the flooring and drywall replaced. Everything is covered in a thick coating of oozing mud and dead worms. It's only a matter of time before the mold begins to grow.

A friend of mine saw my mother on Omaha's Action 3 News and sent me the link to a video clip of her being interviewed. I started crying watching my mother tell the reporter that she had lost everything, while choking back tears to speak. Who ever expects to see their mother on the news telling a reporter they've lost everything? It's surreal...for me anyway, and all too real for Oma.

Alas, there is a dichotomy to the situation. Oma has always been too consumed by the pursuit of material possessions. I can definitely see God using this as a means to clean house - literally. Now Oma must throw away all the things she has clung to for so long. All the things she has pursued, all the things she has cherished, hoarded, overspent on, gone in debt for, in a word - idolized, will take their ultimate place in the dump where all material possessions truly belong. I'm sorry that Oma's very house has been ruined, but I'm not so sorry that all of the 'stuff' has been put in its proper place. I only hope that she will learn from this lesson and never elevate things above their place again.

Some people might think I sound like a harsh person. I'm truly not. I would say to such a person, "You don't know Oma." Oma is a hoarder and compulsive shopper on a grand scale. She lives alone, since Opa passed six years ago, in a three bedroom house that is plum full of crapola. Every room is filled. You cannot even use the bedrooms because they are filled to the brim with boxes and bags of useless stuff. In addition to her house, Oma rents two storage sheds to store even more stuff, and yet, she continues to shop. It's sad. I've actually had nightmares over the years of Oma dying, and leaving me to sort through and get rid of all this baggage on my own. I have an older brother, but he has MS and in time will be of no physical use to me in this cleaning-out-the-junk endeavor. I'm not a harsh person; I want my mother to be free of the bondage she is under to material possessions.