stopped swimming in the pool during the last year or two of her life. One day during a phone call with her, she nonchalantly mentioned that the pool was starting to turn black. That’s when she told me that she stopped running the filter to save money on electricity and stopped putting chlorine in it. She had plenty of money. She could easily afford to take care of the pool.
I had to threaten her with the possibility of getting fined for creating a health hazard and with angering neighbors. I told her that she couldn’t just stop maintaining property that she owned and that if she really didn’t want her built-in pool anymore, she could drain it of all water.
She ended up hiring a local pool company who did a great job of cleaning up the pool and then came to the house on a regular basis to maintain the pool and troubleshoot any problems. They did a great job of keeping the pool in great shape.
Shortly after the phone call with her that revealed that she was letting the pool go, we went down to visit/check on her. The pool wasn’t really black. But there was a lot of algae. While we were sitting at the patio table poolside, a whole bunch of frogs started leaping out of the pool. They were reacting to the chemicals that were now being added to the pool again.
For years, she had a good friend who took care of her pool for free for her. It was when he decided to move out of Florida to live closer to his daughters that she decided to stop taking care of the pool. I think that’s what set her off. She really took her friend for granted, referring to him as her pool boy. (cue the Sunset Boulevard music). That and the fact that my sister and I weren’t willing to move to FL.(She refused to even consider moving to NY.) She basically wanted someone else to take care of the pool but she didn’t want to pay for that service.
