My mum is 76. She's also ill - she has ME, I think she has fibromyalgia as well, she has frequent problems with her gut obstructing after bowel cancer surgery 15 years ago, she can eat no fibre (read fruit and vegetables), she has back problems and wrist problems and neck problems. She has had several falls - the last one was on New Year's Eve, when she cracked 3 ribs.
So she cannot keep her house clean. She has had helpers but she fired one after - oh, I don't even remember why - and the last one went because, apparently, she insisted on wiping the bathroom sink with the same rag she'd just cleaned the toilet with. And she refuses to contemplate another, because those last two were such bad experiences.
But even they were only working in the clear paths between all mum's stuff, because she is a hoarder. She has mountains of magazines that she cannot throw out until she has read them all and carefully cut out any picture or recipe or article she imagines my sister or I might like. She has plastic bags full of old clothes and new clothes and doll clothes and toys and cardboard boxes and toilet paper rolls and newspapers and her dining room table is covered in a mountain of receipts and paperwork and scraps of wrapping paper and church programmes and magazine articles and god knows what else. On her cooktop is a bag of flour that expired in 2005. Now imagine all that times a 3-bedroom house.
She cannot accept any form of help with it, either. She thinks that her whole problem is that she's ill, but a couple of years ago a friend of hers tried to throw out a plastic bag that she thought was rubbish and mum ended up going through the woman's bin to get it back. She is still traumatized by that and, I think, by my sister's frequent offers to hire a skip and take a week off work and help mum out. But all mum talks about, besides her illnesses, is how much progress she's made, getting a few things thrown out today. Mostly she complains that she hasn't made any progress at all, but she's determined it will be sorted, like the war, by Christmas.
We used to be able to visit. The dc's and I would sit in the two square metres of clear space on the floor and they would get out all her toys and children's books or go play the piano, but for the past couple of months she's refused to have us in. She says the mess is too bad. My 4yo ds has asked often when we're going again, and the sad thing is, I think the only answer can be 'never'.