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This Very Moment

The True and Tragic Tale of My Grandmother, the Hoarder

By Final ThoughtsPublished 6 years ago 6 min read
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Photo by Christopher Flynn on Unsplash

“The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain’s words burn in my mind as I wake to see streams of early morning light peering through the curtains suspended across the windows of the conversion van. Those ineffable words, chilling and haunting, strike me at my core. They irk me to the point of psychosis, for how am I supposed to be in touch with reality if the supposed “pivotal equation” for my life is unfinished? I know who I am. I’m Donna, Donna Leota Seaman Kirkpatrick to be specific, born into this disillusion on May 7, 1933. But how am I meant to go on when the reason as to why has been destroyed on more than one occasion? I suppose my good friend Mark didn’t consider that, and it makes my entire being ache with disdain.

I thought I knew. Yes, there was a time when I thought I had it all figured out. But I was young and foolish then, or at least that’s what I like to tell myself. I was in awe of my husband, my best friend, and the only thing in the world that mattered was giving him a family, the perfect family. And that was my mission, my reason, my “why.” One boy, one girl, that’s all I needed. If I could just do that my life would be made, we would be happy — complete. Although it seems life had a different idea.

I lost four children in the early 50s and my perfect plan seemed to be transforming into a rather dismal state of affairs. But I never let this slow me down; “pick up the pieces and keep going; get tough or get broken.” That was my motto — my battle cry. And then, finally, in 1959 I had my boy. He was perfect, my pride and joy. And only three years later my self-ordained prophecy was fulfilled as I brought my daughter into the world, and everything seemed to be falling into place. My “equation” was complete and I was the happiest woman alive. However, this didn’t last long. That’s the funny thing about feelings. They’re fickle, changing as quickly as the ebb of the sea. The two most important days of my life had come and gone and all I had left to do was wonder, what now? I became restless and the ghosts of my past cried for attention each and every day; the souls of my four children calling to me, begging me to acknowledge their absence. But I simply could not succumb to mournings of the past. I had neither the time nor the energy. After all, I had my family now and we were perfect, we were happy. Or were we?

I tried to love them, truly. But the unrelenting howls of the silent, the dead, made it difficult, the berating judgments rising from the grave telling me I should have heeded the warnings of the children who didn’t make it. They were proclaiming my worst fear: that I just wasn’t meant to be a mother. And with that, the question arose again: what now? I began to question if I had labeled my second most important day wrongly if I still hadn’t found my “why.”

I questioned a lot of things during this time in my life and I never was much of a thinker, so I was in desperate need of a distraction. Everything seemed to be spiraling down the drain of control and I couldn’t stop it no matter how hard I tried. That is until I started collecting. I always did love catching up on my gossip columns and my husband was a bit of a news junkie, so there were always a few magazine and newspapers lying around, and I absolutely detested throwing things away; after all, you never know when you might need something in the future that you don’t necessarily require in the moment. As my stockpile of reports and commentaries grew, we decided it best that the children share a room, so that the one previously belonging to my daughter could be put to better use. I began collecting anything and everything I could get my hands on from dolls and books to refrigerator magnets, and our spare bedroom was full within a month. As I was searching one day for a home for my new ceramic squirrel collection, something clicked. As I stood back and gazed at the jungle of trinkets before me, I was completely in awe of the masterpiece I had created. At that moment I knew I had found my new “why.” I may not have been cut out for motherhood in the capacity I originally thought, however seeing this made me realize I was destined to mother my surroundings. That house was mine to govern and those things were my babies. I would do anything to protect them. As my new family expanded, they needed more room to “stretch their legs.” And thus, things slowly began making their way into other parts of the house. It started out as piles in the den which then spilled into the living room, eventually overtaking the garage, turning it into a castle of boxes. At this point, my family (the fleshly ones), being the tyrants they were, tried to convince me I had a problem. They called it “hoarding” and I scoffed at the thought of it. I wasn’t sick. I was fulfilling my purpose. I was happy.

Until I ran out of room.

And not just in the house. By the early 1990s, it was everywhere. The house, the yard, even our cars were being taken over by various paraphernalia. At this point our children were long gone, finding their own “whys” which made our living arrangements much easier. My husband and I decided we didn’t need much to make it and moved into our Chevrolet which was permanently parked in the front yard, protected by a fence of ivy ridden birdbaths and rusty motorcycles.

It is now the year 2000, and as I wake from another restless night of upright slumber and peek out of my cave into the harsh reality that is my world, I wonder once more, “What now?” I have lost all hope for a new beginning, yet another new “why.” My hopes and dreams for the perfect life, the perfect family, and perfect control have been long destroyed and I have to wonder what Mark Twain was thinking as he penned those crucial words. I have to wonder if as he sat down to record the equation to life if he knew that it was unsolvable. I have to wonder if he felt as hopeless as I do in This. Very. Moment.

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Final Thoughts

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