Dopey was surprised to see me when I arrived home from the airport. I did give the lease over to her since I didn't know if I'd be returning to Vancouver from England and she wanted some legal protection from Dippy trying to take over things and create her customary havoc, chaos and destruction. That night Dopey sprained her ankle just as we were on our way home. She tripped in a hollow in the ground just outside our front yard. Being old, a bit overweight and rather frail she didn't take it well and insisted on being taken to the hospital immediately. I called 911 and felt whatever vestige of freedom I had enjoyed while in Europe shrivel like a blade of grass in the Sahara desert. The prospect of being a live-in caregiver to an old woman horrified me. It wasn't that I was unwilling, but rather just as I felt that I was getting a life it was suddenly snatched away from me.
Dopey was territorial and clearly wanted the Ferndale house to herself. Instead of being honest (like almost all Anglicans I have ever known she was a cowardly, mealy-mouthed liar who wouldn't say shit if she had a mouth full of it) she expressed concern for poor idiot Dippy having to fend for herself at Shiloh House. I must move in there to support her. I caved and went to stay with Dippy, her care-taker and custodian.
It wasn't that bad. We actually got along well and really tried to cooperate. She disclosed that her relationship with the mentally ill drug addict (now in a transition house) had not been platonic, felt brutally ashamed and of course I did everything I could to support her especially given the fierceness of her own self-reproach. We continued with regular prayer and street ministry. Her young boyfriend left the transition house and twice tried to move back into Shiloh House, leaving quite the trail of devastation. Finally I had to call police from a pay phone, he was breaking things, making threats and had torn the phone off its cord (cell phones were still in their infancy in 1991). He had so destroyed the house as to render it unliveable. We bundled together as many of our personal possessions as we could fit in a cab, cat included, and all moved together into the house on Ferndale.
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