According to definition Hoarding is marked by an overwhelming desire to collect things and an inability to discard things that may seem to be useless to such a point that the collections start impacting a person’s life in a negative way. It is a compulsion that leads to accumulating a variety of items accompanied by an inability to discard these items without great distress.
From his childhood on my spouse was always a collector of things. He came into my life with an extensive collection of baseball cards and sports memorabilia. He had karate magazines and Harley Davidson t-shirts and ticket stubs from events he had attended throughout his life. He had things that held an emotional or ‘financial’ value. When we married these collections began to make their way into my home. My spouse had some peculiar personality quirks that those of us who knew and loved him attributed to his being an only beloved son, much wanted and spoiled by a mother who had no others and a father who was crippled and in a wheelchair.
My spouse was overprotected and catered to by all accounts. He was a mediocre student but a star athlete. He was a football hero in high school. He was the MVP baseball player with a batting average that made the newspapers and secured him a scholarship at a local college he wouldn’t make the grades to attend. He was well known, well liked and very charismatic. He was the center of his universe and made no apologies for it. He lived life on his terms and did as he pleased, he had several lovers, this was the 70’s and 80’s after all. He had two beautiful daughters whom he loved with all his heart. He volunteered with the local recreation center to coach youth sports for years.
When we met he was in his late 40’s and I was in my late 30’s. He was a dynamic karate instructor and devoted workout enthusiast. I was at the end of an abusive relationship, a single mother with 3 sons. One was grown and gone and two were in the home. We became friends as I struggled to get out of the destructive marriage and he coached my middle son in Pee Wee football and he coached me as I began my own martial arts journey. He was a narcissist with a big heart.
When we finally married after 10+ years of off and on dating, I found him to be a wonderful companion. After an overbearing, abusive marriage, his live and let live attitude was liberating. He was my anchor as he respected my need for a little independence. There were things he did, things I did and many things we did together. When he began moving his things to my home I quickly became overwhelmed by the volume of stuff. I tried to organize the stuff at first, but that quickly became impossible. The idea that this was hoarding didn’t happen all at once but gradually over the years as stuff came in and never went out.
When does collecting become hoarding? That line can become blurred to the point it is unrecognizable, then one day you wake up and look around the house and realize there is only a single place to sit down. Every surface area is piled up with stuff. One bedroom, the spare room, is so full of stuff the door doesn’t open all the way. When investigated the stuff turns out to be things like his daughter’s moldy Barbie Dolls and clothing they wore as small children, from the still usable to the torn, stained and mildewed. It is piles of magazines and newspapers. It is what anyone else would consider trash or junk. I had to stop my subscription to the local paper because the paper came in but never left. There were piles of newspapers everywhere.
How could you let your house get in this shape? How could I stop it? I made excuses….I stayed busy….I got to where we just slept at the house. We were busy people, If I was not at work we were on the go. We never ate at the house, we never relaxed at the house, We had things to do, places to go, people to see…
He ‘collected’ church bulletins, going down the pews and picking up any that other parishioners left behind. He did this at sporting events too, picking up the game programs left behind. Not only did he have every stitch of clothing he ever wore but he started going to thrift stores and buying other people’s clothing and tennis shoes. If it had a name brand on it, the size was irrelevant. He also developed a thing for ‘leather’ jackets…and would buy any he found at thrift stores. Football jerseys became a thing for a while…the player and team didn’t matter. Slowly, mounds of chaos sprang up all over the house. I would clean a space off and it would fill with new stuff. I would try to haul stuff off and this lead to a total melt down on his part. I tried slipping things into the garbage until he started going behind me and digging through the garbage to retrieve things he thought we should keep. I was told…just throw it out. He will get over it! These people didn’t have to live with the total emotional basket case that resulted in any attempts to clear things out. I got a storage shed for 100 dollars a month and hauled several loads there only to have him go and selectively bring things back every chance he got. I was slowly relegated to living out of tubs. I had two areas where I kept my things and had to constantly move his stuff out of that space. It just wasn’t worth the distress, panic, the anger and the hurt it stirred up when I made any move to clean up.
Denial is a huge state and I took up residence there. I made jokes about living in hoarders paradise but I wasn’t serious, not really…When he was diagnosed with Dementia and we began to assess his symptoms with his doctor, it turns out that hoarding is a big red flag. It had been slapping me in the face for a couple of years before his mental deterioration got to the point that other people were noticing it. By the time he was struggling with paranoia, hallucinations and the pending loss of independence, our compassionate doctor told me that the hoarding was indeed a red flag for psychosis associated with dementia, but at this stage, it was really inadvisable to try and do anything about it. After all, we had been living with it for years, to try and significantly change his environment while dealing with all the other issues would only make things worse for him. He was already under tremendous duress for the dementia, stressing him unnecessarily could cause his decline to worsen. There would be a time when cleaning up was all that was left to do. When we got there it would all be waiting for me.
Everyone’s journey through this dark terrain will be as unique as we are. How each of us handles what we experience will determine our overall well being. It is a hard thing. It is a painful thing. Sometimes, it is a desperately lonely thing. Hang on. Look for those tidbits of glory within the darkness. It will test you, and you will not always feel good about the results. You can’t help what your loved one is going through, all you can do is be there, support and love them. and hang on for the ride…no…it doesn’t end well…but you will get to decide how you pick up the pieces and where you go from there.
MrsSmithsLifeUnexpected 