Page 20 of Good Days Bad Days
Charlie
Present Day
“Seven hundred seventy-six. Seven hundred seventy-seven. Seven hundred seventy-eight.” I tie up the red plastic strings of a garbage bag filled with stiff crystalized sugar packets like the ones set out on the table of any diner.
I know counting is a time waster, as Dino Flanders would call it.
He’s the professional cleaner/organizer featured on another popular HFN program from Clinton, Mississippi.
I finally convinced Dad to let me hire him after a local crew backed out, scared off by the intensity of the project and the potential dangers of unloading a house that’d been jam-packed for so long.
“Can’t start at the bottom,” one of the local guys said after touring the house. “Only reason the upstairs hasn’t collapsed is all this junk holding it up.” He motioned to the floor-to-ceiling boxes, and I felt my dad stiffen at the mention of “junk” when referring to my parents’ belongings.
“What do you think?” I asked Dino over the phone last week after acquiring his number from a colleague at HFN and sharing a highly embarrassing but completely accurate video of the state of my parents’ house.
I waited patiently for another terminal diagnosis, another “tear it down, garbage and all” but instead Dino grumbled, cleared his throat, and spoke, his gruff voice softened by the elongated vowels of his southern accent.
“We’ve seen better and we’ve seen worse. I’ll be there on Monday with my crew.”
Monday morning, he drove up with a line of cars behind him, a group of ten, all wearing matching coveralls like on his show.
Dino and his team are experts when it comes to working with individuals with hoarding disorder and their families.
He insists it’s important we all be involved, even my mother from a distance when possible.
The incidence of suicide in those with hoarding disorder is high after a rushed mandatory deep clean.
I trust him, and I think my dad is starting to trust him, too.
First, he met with me and Dad to set the ground rules for the crew.
Anything outside of my parents’ room with mold or animal damage or droppings could be tossed immediately.
Broken furniture should be assessed by Dad in case he could restore it and sell it in his shop.
And a request from my mother: All pictures, books, and official documents should be approved by my father.
Upon some negotiating, he added me to the reviewer list.
The final and most important of my father’s rules pertained to the 778 sugar packets that I’d found under my mother’s bed in a series of rotting shoeboxes. No one—not Dino, his crew, or even me—is allowed to remove even one item from my parents’ room without my father’s permission.
“Your mother’s most prized possessions are in there,” Dad explained to both me and Dino when he refused to budge on the one caveat.
He pushed his hand in and out of his jeans pocket, nervously, like he was looking for evidence that he wasn’t being unreasonable but kept coming up empty.
“What if she asks for something and I can’t find it? ”
“She can barely remember who you are, Dad. I don’t think she’ll care,” I said, siding with Dino, even though I knew it wasn’t as black and white as that.
Nurse Mitchell says as the RPD progresses, my mom’s memory is like Swiss cheese—there are holes but there’s also a lot of cheese.
Eventually, the holes will grow, her memory retention will lessen until there’s little substance and mostly holes.
The last memories to go are the ones that’ve been there the longest.
My dad’s shoulders hunched at my indelicate reminder of his wife’s deteriorating condition. I know it’s already painful enough how she often calls him one of her old boyfriends’ names or shoos him out of the room like a stranger.
I felt like shit almost immediately, and when he kept his fists buried in his pockets and pleaded, “It’s just one room,” I told Dino I was fine with making this one exception for my dad.
In exchange for my flexibility, Dad added me to the list of people allowed inside the room, and we’ve been slowly but surely making a dent in the ten-foot-thick wall of hoard that surrounds my parents’ bed in carefully crafted layers, like a wasp’s nest.
“Dad. Sugar packets. Can I toss them?” I call to him from across the room from behind a white KN95 mask that’s supposed to keep dust and mold and other irritants out.
He’s on the other side of one of the now-empty shelving units, digging into a fresh line of boxes.
There are two layers, at least that’s the number my father remembers.
Two sets of floor-to-ceiling shelves arranged with so little walking room between them that I wonder how my mother ever expected to access the belongings she’d basically walled off with each additional strata of storage.
“Let me look,” he calls, his voice muffled by boxes and books and clothing no one will ever wear again. I sigh, annoyed that he has to look at every single item I uncover.
“It’s just sugar, Dad. Let me toss it. I have to throw out garbage or else we’re gonna be here forever.” He peeks through the empty shelving as I display a handful of packets, letting them rain down into the overflowing bag.
“I think your mother was saving those for the food drive at the lodge.”
“These are hard as a rock.” I demonstrate their petrified nature by snapping one of the packets in half. It makes a cracking sound that should be enough to convince him. “No one wants this in their coffee.”
“All right, all right. Fine. Throw them out.” He gives the approval, and I grab that bag along with four others he’s OK’d throughout the day. It’s nearly quitting time and I’m dying to go back to my little rental house, take a long shower, pour a glass of wine, and unwind.
My back aches from endless hours hunched over boxes and bags, sorting and counting, finding more and more creative storage solutions for the items my father insists on keeping. Four bags to toss? That’s huge.
“Thank youuuuu,” I say, squeezing through the doorway with my hard-won bounty before he can change his mind.
It’s clear that though my father isn’t the hoarder in the family, he’s still complicit in the state of this home and the state of his life.
I keep thinking about what I’d do if Ian had such a grand and damaging obsession, one he wasn’t willing to address.
I mean, I’m still unable to get past a couple of salacious texts.
You’re a quitter. You’ve always been a quitter.
My mother’s voice rings in my mind as I wind my way through the footpath in the dining room.
I was twelve, and after coming in dead last at each and every cross-country meet, I decided running was not my talent.
Auditions for the fall play were the next week, but rehearsals conflicted with cross-country practice.
So, I quit and auditioned for Alice in Wonderland and somehow got the lead.
When I told my mom, she said I couldn’t accept the part.
I’d made a commitment to cross-country and I had to stick it out.
“You’re a quitter,” she said again, and I stared at the wall where the wallpaper in the dining room didn’t match up quite right.
I turned down the role and stuck with track until I hurt myself two weeks later and had to sit out the rest of the season.
Mrs. Robins, the director of the play, let me take a small part once she heard what happened, and then I landed the lead in the spring musical.
I never ran again, and my mom has pointed to that as evidence of my “lack of drive” ever since.
I’m sure she found my first divorce quite satisfying.
“Here. Four more,” I say from the porch to the small crew in the yard, holding up the bags like a prizewinning fish I’d pulled out of the lake. Tina, Dino’s wife of thirty years and business partner, claps her gloved hands, and Will, one of their assistants, barely acknowledges my declaration.
“We’re up to sixty for today,” Will says dully, stacking items on a folding table under one of the six blue canopies used as sorting stations. “I need approval here,” he adds, stepping back from the spread in front of him.
“Let me toss these and I’ll be by.”
My wrists ache from the weight of the bags, and as I pass Tina on my way to the dumpster, she adds, “I have some items for you to check, too,” with a southern drawl as charming as her husband’s.
She stands by a folding table covered with papers, books, and a few photographs, along with a pair of baby shoes and two unopened boxes with mailing labels on them and yellowed tape peeling up on the corners.
I’ll need to look through and decide the fate of these objects—garbage or storage.
I lean heavily toward garbage in my decision-making, especially when I’m lucky enough to give approval when Dad is busy inside.
I’ve found that what he doesn’t know is thrown away doesn’t hurt him.
I’d like to think I’d be fine with shoveling nearly everything from this house into one of the portable garbage bins sitting in the driveway, but that’s not totally true.
Sugar packets, yes. Broken frames and melted candles, most definitely.
But little pieces of my mother still linger in this house, pieces I’ve never seen or known or understood.
Those items I do want, I desperately want.