Jessie Sholl - Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mothers Compulsive Hoarding

Family members of compulsive hoarders can often, though not always, point to a particular trauma that occurred right before the hoarding began. Its as if theres a pattern in their brains, awaiting the right trigger to set the hoarding behavior in motion. My mothers trauma that triggered the true hoarding was Roger dying.

Throughout the rest of the day I come across photographs of her and Roger together, as well as (unopened) Mothers Day and birthday cards from me, on the floor under or among the junk piles. For a second I wonder how she could be so careless with these things.

But it isnt carelessness. Its the mental illness of compulsive hoarding. Thats why she insists on keeping broken sewing machines and broken coffeemakers and a broken dishwasher hogging the last of the free space in her kitchen; thats what compels her to leave her possessions out in the open rather than on a shelf or in a drawer; and thats what leaves her frozen in place whenever she needs to make a decisionin the bank, in the grocery store, in the middle of her cluttered staircasewhile she mumbles to herself, weighing the consequences of choosing X, Y, or Z. Its all because of a mystifying mental illness that happens to have a depressingly low rate of recovery.

I wish there were a magic pill or surgery or something instantaneous to fix her, but there isnt. I wish I could convince her to stop, but I cant. Not that thats going to keep me from trying.

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Copyright 2011 by Jessie Sholl

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Designed by ATTIC

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sholl, Jessie.

Dirty secret : a daughter comes clean about her mothers compulsive hoarding / by Jessie Sholl.

p. cm.
1. Compulsive hoardingUnited StatesCase studies. 2. Sholl, Jessie. 3. Sholl, JessieFamily. 4. Compulsive hoardingUnited StatesPatientsFamily relationshipsCase studies. 5. Mothers and daughtersUnited StatesCase studies. 6. MothersMinnesotaMinneapolisBiography. 7. Minneapolis (Minn.)Biography. I. Title.

RC569.5.H63S4 2011
362.2'5dc22

2010042872

ISBN 978-1-4391-9252-8
ISBN 978-1-4391-9253-5 (ebook)

For my mother, whose only request when I asked
her permission to write this book was that
I employ radical honesty.

In that spirit, here goes.

PROLOGUE

DONT KICK ME OUT! MY MOTHER SAYS WHEN I PICK UP the phone. Its a little hard to understand her, though, because shes laughing so hard.

What are you talking about?

She cant be considering inflicting a visit on me. That is not going to happen.

Im putting my house in your name, my mother says. You have to promise not to kick me out after its yours.

I dont want your house, I say. You couldnt pay me to take your house.

You have to take it. She stops laughing. I have cancer.

My first thought: My mother is going to die.

My second thought: I can finally clean her house. She hasnt let me inside in more than three years, not since the last time I cleanedor, rather, gutted, it.

David, my husband, is standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, watching me. I mouth the words Cancer, my mom has cancer, but he doesnt understand. And why would he? I dont understand whats happening myself.

Mom, please. Just tell me whats going on.

Okay, she says, sounding suddenly drained of all energy. I had a colonoscopy and they found a polyp and its malignant. I have colon cancer. I want the house in your name in case the bills are higher than my insurancethat way they cant take it away.

What did your doctor say? Tell me exactly what he said.

At this, my husband comes over and sits down next to me on the couch. He lifts our dog, Abraham Lincoln, onto my lap, thinking his presence will comfort me, but I shake my head and allow the dog to squirm off. I already feel myself floating away from here, already mentally searching for a way to fix my mother, like always.

They wont really have a prognosis until the surgery, she says. But with the house in your name, itll be yours no matter what.

She says it as if shed be bestowing the most spectacular palace upon me, rather than what her house really is: the source of so many years of frustration, embarrassment, and grief. I cant imagine anything worse than being legally responsible for that house. Except my mother having cancer.

Jessie, will you do it? She pleads. Will you let me put my house in your name?

Will you let me clean?

Yes. Her lack of hesitation makes me even more worried. She must not think her chances are good.

Okay.

* * *

MY MOTHER IS a compulsive hoarder. Shes one of those people who dies because the firemen couldnt get through the piles of newspapers and clothes and books and shoes and garbage, whose junglelike lawn makes the whole block look shoddier, whose friends and neighbors are shocked when they finally see the houses interior: They had no idea their friend/daughter/nurse/teacher lived that way. They had no idea anyone could live that way. Yet an estimated six million Americans do.

Ive long searched for the perfect concoction of begging, conniving, and bribing that would finally make my mother throw out the trash and keep her house clean. Because I know that if I could get her to unclutter her house, her cluttered mind would follow: Somewhere under all the filth is a reliable mother, a consistent and compassionate mother; somewhere under the heaps of moth-eaten sweaters and secondhand winter coats, the cardboard boxes kept because theyre just such good quality, the jar after jar of unopened jumbo-sized facial scrubs and green clay masks and aloe vera skin creams, the plastic forks and dirty paper plates and gum wrappers and dried-out pens and orphaned Popsicle sticks. Every surface covered, crowded with layer upon layer of stuff. I know shes in there; I just have to find her.

I make the preparations to fly to my hometown of Minneapolis from New York City, where Ive lived for most of the last decade. I tell no one that while Im in Minneapolis for my mothers surgery the majority of my time will be spent filling up garbage bags and hauling trash from her house, that my muscles will ache so badly Ill barely be able to lift a coffee mug to my lips, that only an hour-long soak in a scalding-hot bath at my dad and stepmoms house at the end of each day will erase the layers of filth and grime from my skin. Only my husband knows that part. I tell no one else because its my secret. And I tell no one at all that in spite of our complicated relationship, the thought of her dying is absolutely unbearable and that if that happened I would be shattered into a million pieces and there would be no way, no one, to put me back together.