Saying goodbye

I had to get rid of many of my personal items in the past few days. These are items that were mine, but stayed at my mother's house. I'm not sure why they were all there. Perhaps I thought that my mother was a better steward of my adolescent belongings than I would have been. Of course, I now know that this assumption was incorrect.

In addition to my childhood artwork and birth certificate (the latter was stuck to the carpet under a thick layer of animal excrement), I have disposed of the following:

• Trophies and souvenirs from high school educational competitions
• Letter jacket, earned from two years of cross-country running
• High school diploma
• High School graduation gown and cap
• Prom dress
• Books read for mandatory summer reading in high school English classes (I wasn't necessarily sad to see all of these go)
• Letter my father wrote while my mother was in labor with me

The last item was the hardest. Reading an account of my birth, written in my father's handwriting, brought tears to my eyes. It was hard to throw out, but there was urine and mold growth on it. That's pretty much how it is going now with throwing items out. "Hate to see it go, but it's covered in shit and bacteria." When Mom complains about me throwing something out, I have to point out to her that it was covered in God knows what, and she should have taken better care of it.

We have filled the 3rd dumpster, which means that 9 tons / 180 cubic feet of garbage have been removed from the house. We have already ordered the 4th dumpster, but it will mostly be filled with construction debris. We are now at the point where the trash is nearly all out of the house, and we can have a contractor come in to assess the damage and determine what needs to be repaired and replaced. It is likely that my husband and I will be doing the work ourselves (mostly me, since he works a million hours a week and I am unemployed). I'm looking forward to tearing things up and out of her home - hopefully ripping up carpet and taking a sledgehammer to the bathroom cabinets will satisfy my destructive urges towards the house. If her home was not a town house adjoined to two other properties, I would have thrown a match to it a long time ago.

Current stats on the house

Since the diary entries stopped about three weeks ago, I wanted to give a rundown on the progress I have made since then.

Dumpsters filled: 2 1/3
Approximate weight of items trashed: 6.5 tons
Approximate size of total items trashed: 45 cubic yards

Items of note:
4 TVs
2 VCRs
2 DVD players
1 laptop
2 desktop computers
Thousands of books (not including the books she has sorted through)
Grandma & Grandpa's personal correspondence
All of my childhood artwork, from adolescence to college
At least 35 pounds of dog/cat feces
$2500 faux-leather sectional
At least 100 pounds of food
Thousands of dollars worth of clothing and shoes
At least 200 pounds of newspapers and magazines

Mom has healed enough since the surgery to remove her MRSA-infected abscess to come to the house and help clean and clear out items. This is good and bad. Good because more work can be done in less time. Bad because it's a new way to get frustrated at her lack of insight into this problem, and because I can not get mad at her house anymore unless I can keep it to myself. This is hard on certain days, such as yesterday when I had to throw out 20 years of my artwork and found my birth certificate encrusted on the carpet with dog feces and urine.

She is still living at my house. This is a bad situation that causes stress on everyone - myself, my husband, and my mother. My husband has been a saint throughout this for not throwing her out on any of the many incidents that she has insulted me or him (directly or indirectly). I worry that the tension is reaching a breaking point. I already know that my husband will never have a good relationship with my mother. I don't know if I ever will, either.

Diary entry from 3/30/09

Was only able to do a little work on the house on Saturday. Sunday was work at my house. Today I was sidelined with an eye injury.

Tomorrow I go back to the house.

This evening, we had a talk about everything. She is taking this pretty hard and I hope she understands how much therapy could help. I have to watch out about getting angry at her. it's so easy to get angry at the house and the situation and her but it is only making thngs worse. Mom needs positive reinforcement now to make the right choices.

Diary entry from 3/27/09

No work on the house today. I was needing a break, it was bad weather and today was mom's 61st birthday.

She's been here a week. So far, so good.

Diary entry from 3/26/09

3 hours, 6 bags. Dumpster is 1/4 full.

Threw out a lot today, and today was the first day I had an allergic reaction to anything in the house. Her bedroom has a dense amount of garbage that I started to sift through but ended up tossing virtually all of it. As I get closer to the carpet, it reeks of dog urine and feces.

Mom did well with chores at my house today. She is still concentrating on the end result of decorating her newly cleaned house, and not on the physical and emotional work ahead.

I am going to have her write down her goals - what she wants to be able to do when her house is clean. Her first thought was to be able to do needlepoint. I am also going to have her start a gratitude journal. Cheesy, but could help as a start to gaining control of her depression.

Diary entry from 3/25/09

8 bags today. Usual flies, spiders and fruit flies found. I found photos from Grandma, and her art school sketches from the 1930s. I kept the photos but had to throw out the sketches due to mold.

Mom surrounds herself with things that promote and promise "the simple life". But she really wants the EASY life - so easy in fact that she wishes to be free of all responsibilities. She wants instant results, fairy tale endings, magic solutions.

Diary entry from 3/24/09

(this is from when I started a paper journal to document this progress. But I feel more comfortable writing in a blog.)

Yesterday - filled 10 bags. Found spiders (including brown recluse) and one big dead cockroach. Found Grandma's recipes stuffed in a corner underneath used bandaids and work papers. Three hours work.

Today - filled 9 bags, found 3 types of maggots. 1 1/2 bottles of Drano later and the kitchen sink is still clogged. Found note husband wrote to mom the night before our wedding, saying we would ALWAYS be there for her. 5 hours work.

Deep down, I know that this will do nothing. She will get it cluttered and dirty again. She is not just a compulsive hoarder, but also lazy, self-centered and oblivious to those around her - both their physical presence and their social and emotional needs. I often marvel that she isn't dead yet.

She wants to be better but she doesn't want to do the work associated with it. Husband and I are again left with the burden.

While she stays with us, she has a daily chore list. It is pathetically light. "Sweep kitchen floor. "Wipe down kitchen counters. Take a walk." In all, the tasks should take less than an hour, combined. But she stretches it out to all day long. Half of me is sympathetic to her fatigue, arthritis, age (61), her weight which makes things hard. The other half of me is angry and resentful and very, very hurt. Sometimes, that half takes over.

No matter what I tell her, it does not sink in. She hears me but does not listen. My worst nightmare is that I will turn in to her.

First Post

In late March of 2009, my mother went to the emergency room with a abscess that had been infected with MRSA (Methicillan-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a strain of staph that is very fast and does not respond to typical antibiotics). On this day, I went to her house to pick up her dog and discovered that her problem has returned.

My mother suffers from compulsive hoarding. Her house and car are filled with an enormous, overwhelming amount of STUFF. TRASH. JUNK. Thousands of books, hundreds of pounds of newspapers and magazines, enough Christmas decorations for six houses, discarded products and empty wrappers. At the start of this project, she had two pets - a dachshund named Oscar who is not housebroken, and a 17 year old cat named Wheaties who lived in only one room. Add the overwhelming scent of animal waste to the already powerful odor of mold, dust and rotting food, and you have the stink that hits you as soon as you open her front door. It's a five room home (seven if you include the bathroom), and only 2 were usable. And those were limited.

This is the home I grew up in. Most of my personal posessions left a long time ago, but the memories remain embedded in the walls. To see my childhood home in this state is horrifying. It's more horrifying to see it after my husband (then boyfriend) and I cleaned it all for her four years ago. Since then, she was upset enough at me to tell me she didn't want my help anymore. Four years ago was the last time I stepped inside the home. Late March of 2009 was the last time I decided to keep her secret.

Her doctors are sure that the deplorable conditions of her home contributed to her infection, as well as many of the health issues she has had over the years. Her compulsive hoarding has permanently damaged our relationship.

This blog is intended to be my collection of thoughts during this process. I will be angry, sad, hopeful, disappointed. I will use humor to deflect the pain. I will be scathing in my assessments. I will try to move on.