June 28, 2016
Dear A.P.,
We sometimes watch your show on a cable station. It seems innocent enough. You travel around the country looking
for treasures stored in peoples’ barns, garages, and yards. We marvel at the
items you uncover, many of which the owner doesn’t even remember owning and
often don’t know the worth. You gather these treasures and sell them for
profit. Good work if you can get
it, I guess.
But the issue here for me is the hoarding nature of the
endeavor. When we see these places, they are often riddled with dust, and the
owners will admit that they hadn’t even looked at any of it for years. The
other point often made has to do with age – the person who gathered and kept
these items is sometimes long gone and their relatives have to dispose of the
items. Or the owner is getting kind of old and knows he/she has to get rid of
the things, but still has a hard time. Sometimes they refuse to sell certain
items. Why? Hard to fathom.
As someone that recognizes this scenario, I know why they
don’t sell. You see, I have a Certain Family Member (CFM) who is a hoarder. The
problem is not just the amount of stuff, although that is bad. It is that this CFM has an emotional
attachment to each and every box of whatever she has shipped all over the
Midwest. These boxes fill up two
bedrooms in her three bedroom home, plus the entire garage. The hallways and
walkways in her bedroom and sections of the kitchen are given over to boxes
of…what? Any normal person just
looking into these boxes don’t see anything of value. In other words, the A.P. show would not find anything to
sell for a profit.
It doesn’t end with the boxes, which are disintegrating
slowly and creating a dusty environment to the home. It’s all the stacks of
magazines that will be read “someday” and the newspapers scattered on the
floor. The coffee table is stacked high with whatever, and the kitchen table is
unusable for the same reason.
Years ago my nephew tripped over some clutter and hit his head on a
corner of a table. That was enough for my brother-in-law. My sister visits CFM
alone now when she is in town.
I am traveling today to CFM’s home. I have run out of places to stay when I
travel north. My sister and a
good friend have moved away from Ohio.
My other friend has divorced and moved from her house, the place I’ve
stayed the last couple times I was up there. I’m out of options.
I have been assured by my brother that nothing has changed. I will be
spending the next few days maneuvering around boxes and knowing that it will do
me absolutely no good to ask CFM to start ridding herself of this stuff. You’d think at 83 she would want to. But it isn’t the case. Instead she will dig in harder. The idea of getting rid of stuff so her
relatives don’t have to do it doesn’t seem to cross her mind.
So when people ask if I’m excited for my trip, I can only
say yes, conditionally. I am glad
that I will spend a couple nights at my brother’s home, giving me a break from
the chaos. I will try to deal with
CFM on the terms available – someone who was broken long ago, who clings to
every little newspaper puzzle and scrap of paper from her parent’s house as a
way to keep balanced somehow. It
isn’t something I will ever understand.
I just know that when it is over, I will be grateful to get home and
will probably find myself purging anything unnecessary as a way to heal from
the experience of living with a hoarder for a week. And I don’t look forward to
the day that I, along with my siblings, have to start dealing with the years of
“pickings” gathered and kept. It
will be agonizing. It will not
feel profitable.
Sincerely,
HMS
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