By A.J. Llewellyn

I was not going to blog about this today, but as usual, I lead with my heart and I need to talk once again about the old lady.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the old lady who got into my car outside the bank and insisted I drive her home. At the time I was both amused and alarmed that she knew so much about me and felt, from her observations that I was a safe bet. I think I was more afraid of her than she was of me.

This morning, my best friends Chris and Tracy and their beautiful daughter Eleanna came to pick me up for our weekly visit to our local Farmer’s Market. It’s one of my favorite, sacred rituals, but we were hardly two blocks down the road when I noticed the old lady, about whom I’d blogged. She was struggling along with bags of groceries.

I told Tracy, who was driving, that this was the old lady. We stopped and she was very reluctant to get into the car. She knew who I was, but I think she felt intimidated by three men and our little lady, until Eleanna smiled at her. The old lady gave up her grocery bags to me and climbed in. She seemed very dispirited and I was concerned. We got to her house and my friends could see I had not exaggerated her living conditions.

She became quite hysterical when I insisted on walking her to her front door, but when all of us walked up her path, there was an air of resignation as she unlocked it.

“It’s a mess,” she said, which has to go down as the understatement of the century.

The stench of animal piss hit us full force. What I saw next will live with me until the day I die. Her house was filled with animals, most of them in varying states of illness and one little dog waddled to us, great, massive tumors growing out of his tiny butt, weighing him down.

Eleanna started to cry.

None of us could speak.

“Jesus,” was I think the first word uttered by Chris.

We held Eleanna to us since some of the dogs growled, showing their teeth. The stench in the palce was horrific. It was so bad, we were gasping for breath. Litter boxes for the cats (who seemed surprisingly okay) were overflowing and rancid. I saw maggots crawling along the edges.

You could not move in the house for all the crap the old lady had. What stunned me was on a shelf in the living room were brand new, pristine Barbie dolls in their boxes. Here she was in filth and squallor with sick animals and she had brand new dolls!

“Oh my God,” I said when I looked up. The others followed my gaze and that was all she wrote, folks. The living room ceiling had a gigantic hole in it - you could see right up into the sky and black, toxic mold covered, I mean, COVERED the ceiling, growing down like stalegtites.

It was like a scene from that Tom Cruise movie, War of the Worlds.

Chris and Tracy argued with the old lady that she needed help. Chris called the police who came immediately when she became aggressive and agitated. We knew she would never get the help she so desperately needs.

I left Chris and Tracy to help her once the police arrived. I brought Eleanna home with me. She is devastated and traumatized but it was too much for a little girl who really couldn’t have done anything and frankly would have been endangered had we kept her in that disgusting house.

Even as i struggle to understand the mental illness and despair behind this chaos, I feel God’s hand print in all of this. We were meant to see the old lady, we were meant to gang up on her and get her immediate help. I know I have left her in the best possible hands and that Chris and Tracy will do everything they can for her.

Eleanna is in my nice, clean living room, playing with my dog, listening to music. We’ll go down to the market together, if she feels like it. If she doesn’t, we’ll just take our dogs for a nice, long walk.

What I do know is this: her fathers are heroes who helped an old lady who couldn’t help herself. And I am glad I was a small part of her evolution.

Aloha oe,

A.J.