Put The Blame Where It Belongs.. All 478 Lbs of It!

Forget the drink alerts, this is a ‘you might vomit’ alert, so I suggest if you’re eating while reading this, move to a different Post. While reading the article I’m about to write about, I was eating breakfast and had to actually move on to another section of the paper for fear I would lose it. You’ve been warned.

This was first brought to my attention by Blog Sis Anathematized over at Cleanse the World; Rivers of Blood. I agreed it was nasty nasty. Then today, it appeared on the front page of our newspaper. A 4’8” 478lb, 39 year old woman, died last week in Stuart, which is about 25 minutes north of me. The emergency crew found her with labored breathing, on her couch and she had not moved from that couch in so long, the fibers of the couch had fused to the skin on her back. She was sitting in filth, feces, and urine. Her apartment was so disgusting, full of rotting food and bugs as well, that two days after she died, the stench still permeated from the house 90 feet away. She was so big, they could not fit her in the ambulance, besides not being able to move her from the couch due to the ‘fusion’, so they got her out onto a borrowed trailer pulled by a pick up.

So now, guess what? The government is looking to see who is responsible for this. Who can they press charges against? Who can they hold responsible? She had family and friends, but if you read the LONG DAMN article, you will find that most of her family were in and out of jail for drug possession. Great family, eh? Her ‘live in’ boyfriend was in and out of jail on drug charges and even got a DUI on his bike a couple years ago. Neighbors say he was the type to just hang in the front yard and drink beer. Do you think this guy maybe had a substance abuse problem?

Then of course there is the cousin that works for DCF (that’s our family services group) and they’ve been investigating her, wanting to pin it on her somehow, even though she hasn’t seen her cousin in FIVE YEARS! Luckily they found her innocent of misconduct.

OK, so this is my take. So Sad, Too Bad, She’s Dead. Her fault. Personal Responsibility and all that jazz. She was a 39 year old woman! Give me a fucking break! She had a high school diploma at no time was it indicated she was mentally deficient. She even adopted some kids at one point. Last I saw, they didn’t just let any Joe Shit the Ragman off the street adopt someone’s kids. Evidently someone saw this person to be a good woman. You can read the whole sordid tale of how it came to pass that she ended up growing herself to the couch, but the bottom line is, it’s NOBODY’S FAULT BUT HERS!

Her own sister said that she was a hardheaded woman and then said, “Why should we go to jail? She was a grown woman. She could make her own decisions.” Exactly.

So this is the scenario I have in my head. People visit in the beginning, offering to help. “No, No, No”, she says, “I am fine.” Complete martyr, I don’t need your help. This goes on for years and people finally quit asking. The stench starts to get bad because even if she was getting up to go to the bathroom in the beginning, with 400 lbs of fat, there is bad body odor. As time progresses, people stop coming by because it smells bad and hell, she’s not letting them help. They probably lost sympathy, because that is easy to do when you’re with someone who won’t let you help and won’t help themselves. She’s living with an addict, she’s surrounded by addicts, what else do you expect. Who I feel sorry for is the 14 year old daughter.

Let it go. She’s dead. Find a good home for her daughter and move on. She killed herself. End of Story.