In October of 2020, my mother moved into the vacant second floor of a house I'd purchased just the year before. She'd been living on a rural property perpetually on the cusp of disaster. Her house had gone from livable, to not. Her amenities became more artifact than appliances. Walking down the warped hallway to her bathroom was like stepping on storybook illustrations. When her septic tank failed, rather than fix it to code, she'd made do with a Swedish Composting Toilet. And every year, wildfires and walls of blackberries crept closer and closer. Whatever the next scrape was, no Swedish eco-gadget would see her through it.
If you asked her, she’d say she was surviving by stubbornness and duct tape. Both were true, but there was more to it than that, namely the social safety net, and the son safety net. (By now you’ve correctly deduced that this isn’t Paul. I’m his friend, former co-worker, and fellow psych provider, Dan). She was 'living on a fixed income' but that meant “barely living” and only after I’d paid for her mortgage and car. I didn’t look too deeply into where the rest of her money went. Figured it was expensive to be single, more expensive to be old. By the time the writing was on the walls, rafters and foundation of her home in the woods, I was making enough money that moving her into a fixer-upper seemed like a solid solution. An investment and filial duty hole in one.
‘And then,’ of course. And then. Curse-casters have overlooked “may you remodel a house!” It was a grueling endeavor that took more than it gave; in time, money, and the still palpable tension with my wife. We only have time for one sad saga, so about the house let us say it is now ready. With fresh paint and squeaky-clean windows. Yet it feels pre-haunted by what will soon fill this home. Not love, not laughter, but the tangible manifestations of the human condition's tricky side.
My mother, you see, has the Magpie’s knack for accumulation, but in a much bigger and badder nest. In short: hoarding. Not the extreme kind you’d see on reality TV shows, where masked psychologists take you through winding paths of waste. Oh no, mom’s hoarding is subtler, I’m grateful to say. Just enough debris to surprise, to dismay, to make one want to look away. To not see the broken chairs that form a desolate pile in the shed. To ignore the dusty fans with their sun-stained faces, and bolts of untouched fabric coiled like the dreams they were meant to realize.
I’d first encountered hoarding at my friend’s house, decades earlier. We’ll call him Tom. His family lived on a small farm outside of town, and kept an office in the loft of their barn. That office played host to many a late-night game of D&D and Magic the Gathering. It was accommodating, warm and well lit, and always seemed to have the same amount of hay toasting underfoot. It was also the only part of Tom’s house his friends would see, but hey, Tom had a dial-up modem and a beautiful table with swiveling office chairs – and after all, a person is entitled to their secrets.
On one occasion only he invited me into his house, an invitation he’d prefaced with a pregnant pause and “…it’s… messy.” His pooled eyes and stone face asked for a contract of compassion. What small portion I saw of Tom’s house was jarring. Trash and junk was everywhere, coming up to my knees. The bathroom - where he must have scrubbed up for school most days – was a place no amount of Glade could freshen.
Seeing all this provoked a feeling familiar from studying history: humanity holds this, too. Another corner of the great tapestry of humanity unfolded, one without tragedy or ecstasy or great cultural mysteries, but a glimpse into a valley of pathos, odd, uncomfortable, unfathomable, and us. A glimpse into a family not just ticking away, but tricking, slipping, hiding, hurting.
Remembering Tom's home, it was hard not to draw parallels to what I saw when the time came to move mom into the new house. There were parts of my own upstairs I no longer recognized – nor my wife, who was shaken by what had slowly trickled in upstairs without being noticed. The storage shed where the rest of her belongings resided followed suit. My mother’s space wasn’t knee-deep in refuse, no biohazard bags needed, but the degree of disorganization, the relentlessness of the belongings, was devastating. Confronting her about it, she laughed, joked, deflected, but in her eyes gleamed a pathological attachment to her things. All of her things. Each item, no matter how decrepit or redundant, held a story, a memory, a piece of her past. For hoarders, every object is a tether to a moment in time, a defense against the relentless march of years.
Perhaps that’s what makes some of us 'trick'. Our inherent need to grasp at the tangible when the intangible—time, memories, experiences—slips through our fingers. We collect, we accumulate, to anchor ourselves to a world that is constantly changing. Hoarding might be an extreme manifestation of a usually dormant behavior that emerges under conditions of isolation and deprivation, but don't we all, in our ways, cling to the past?
So, how does one navigate a loved one’s hoarding? Empathy is a start. Recognizing that behind every pile of old newspapers or stash of unused fabric, there’s a person desperately trying to hold onto something, to make sense of their world, can shift our perspective. It's not about the 'stuff'. It's about the stories, the memories, the emotions they evoke.
Accepting a hoarder doesn’t mean enabling them. It means being there, understanding, helping them find healthier ways to hold onto what matters without letting their possessions take over. It means understanding that for some, letting go of a broken chair might feel like erasing a cherished memory.
And perhaps, in this journey with my mother, I've come to learn a thing or two about myself. That sometimes, it’s not the things we hold onto that define us, but the memories we create and the love we share. In the end, it's not about the clutter. It's about finding clarity amidst the chaos and cherishing the moments, not the mementos.
I've also come to recognize that what's in her, is in me. And that I have too many balloon whisks - and am past time to put my own house in order.
Good luck, reader, with your own... trickiness.