Hunting Demons, the Epilogue by Angela Rieck

Last year, I wrote a column (Hunting Down Demons) about the trauma that I experienced when I moved to Key West and was besieged by life events. To summarize, my husband and I purchased a house in Key West with the dream of retiring there, he was supposed to retire first and I would continue to work to pay for our renovation. We bought this house because it was in a good neighborhood, and we had some ideas about how we would renovate it.

But those dreams were not to be. From the beginning, my husband was severely injured in a fall while painting the house. He continued to suffer and required 24-hour care, but the doctors could not explain why he was not getting better. He died 8 months later from an undiagnosed, unrelated cancer. He died 7 weeks after the diagnosis.

During that time, I quit my job to care for him. That put our planned renovations on permanent hold. When I returned to our home after his death, it had become infested with all manner of vermin, including rats, palmetto bugs (giant-sized roaches), and termites. Construction on all of the neighboring houses replaced the palm breezes with construction dust that caked our outdoor furniture. Unscrupulous contractors and tradesmen made my life miserable.

I hated that house.

It was a witness to the most intense sorrow, misery, and simply bad luck that I have had in my lifetime. I felt compelled to keep it because I was at a loss as to what to do. It was my late husband’s dream home. So, each year I returned to Key West anxious, depressed and triggered by PTSD. I tried all manner of cures to eliminate the bad energy: minerals, sage, feng shui, prayer, you name it…but each time I returned to the house, the grief and sadness poured into me.

Unfavorable tax laws and outrageous home prices make it impossible to sell. So, last year I realized that I had to make peace with this house and somehow make it my home.

The change began with my realtors, who made me see what the house was and not what it wasn’t. Instead of seeing our broken dreams, slowly, I began to view the house differently.

So I decided to invest in fixing the parts of the house that were the most egregious to me. One problem was that when guests were there, we were on top of each other. I decided to reconfigure the guest bedrooms so that they had an ensuite, and I gave up my study to give them their own recreational area to “hang.” I put TVs in the guest bedrooms and in the new den so that they could have a place to relax. The design allowed them to have a separate entrance as well.

I found an architect who understood that I was clueless when it came to finishings for modern homes. (I have always lived in homes at least 100 years old.) My architect chose everything without my even previewing it. I found a contractor and held both him and my architect to a strict budget.

Due to health issues, I had to return to Maryland during construction and put my trust into my architect’s vision and my contractor’s integrity.

My trust was rewarded. I came back to a beautiful, well-finished home.

They exceeded all of my expectations. If a mistake was made, my contractor would notify me immediately and remedy it while absorbing all costs. Some of the mistakes were so minute that I didn’t notice them; but fortunately for me, he is a perfectionist and insisted that something off by as small as a ½ inch had to be redone, on his dime.

My architect scoured sites to find the best-priced finishings. His determination to give me a beautiful home within my budget became his personal challenge.

They finished the project on time and below budget.

During the year, several new neighbors moved in who were friendly and fun. A neighbor who is a close friend and I have both suffered losses (me my husband and father; she, her son) and understand each other. Recently wonderful people from St. Michaels purchased a home in my neighborhood.

I now love this home. It is no longer a home of lost opportunities. It is my home, my vision. My guests feel welcomed, I have my own space. I have been sewing new curtains and roman shades and changing around my artwork. Each change is a tiny triumph.

Most of the issues with the home had been mine. I had difficulty getting rid of things that my husband either chose or I knew that he liked. One of the problems with grief and loss is the inability to make decisions and say goodbye to objects that are no longer needed. In fact, over half of people with hoarding disorders begin with the loss of a loved one. It is a dual problem, the inability to make decisions and the fear of losing something irreplaceable. This year, when I returned to Key West, I got rid of things that I no longer needed, regardless of their origin.

My house is now a home with possibilities.

And here is the irony. While it is now my home, I realize that I spent almost all of my time and funds on the guest section of the house. Guess what? My husband loved entertaining and was a caretaker. Without considering it, I reconfigured the house in a way that he would have loved.

My PTSD will probably remain. It is a tough disease, and while I have made remarkable progress, it can still be triggered. Today, some psychologists are defining a new category, called Post Traumatic Growth. They believe that people should aspire to grow from PTSD trauma. They define resilience as people who make it through; but they reserve a special category for those who have grown as a result of their trauma.

Personally, I don’t agree and I appreciate the warnings from psychologists who feel that this theory puts more pressure on PTSD sufferers. Now not only must we get through it but we also have to be better. I believe that growth is more nuanced. In some ways I am better and other ways I am diminished. I am a writer; I don’t know if I would have become one without this trauma. But I also now suffer from anxiety. So growth and resilience depends on how you measure, not whether you recover.

I prefer those who see life in color over those who measure it in sepia tones.

Angela Rieck, a Caroline County native, received her PhD in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Maryland and worked as a scientist at Bell Labs, and other high-tech companies in New Jersey before retiring as a corporate executive. Angela and her dogs divide their time between St Michaels and Key West Florida. Her daughter lives and works in New York City.