Dear Susu #11: On Hoarding, Grief, and Asking for What You Need

A Mother's Ashes & the Subject of Stuff

Welcome to the latest installment of Dear Susu, my advice column where I answer your questions about writing and life and everything in between. Today’s question is from “Fed Up with Stuff,” whose husband’s capacity for hoarding has reached what she sees as its “ultimate expression” and who is desperate for change.

Joseph Cornell, Solomon Islands (Interior)

Dear Susu,

I recently learned that my husband has been keeping the urn with his mother’s ashes in our basement—in the clutter room that holds old furniture, boxes of random documents, and our children’s playthings that have gone untouched for years. 

Well, that is quite an opening sentence. My friends would tell you it’s a familiar refrain in the song I’ve been singing for years about my husband’s capacity to hoard things: hockey pucks, Starbucks sleeves, jigsaw puzzles put together and stored under our bed, running shoes with holes in the soles, a 1970s Mercedes in the garage. While I yearn for the freedom from stuff, for a home that feels spacious when I walk in the door, he clings to items, however useless they may seem. But yesterday—the one year anniversary of his mother’s death—brings me to my question.

I knew to acknowledge the day. I had it on my calendar—the day one year ago when he called from the hospital to say that his mother was gone, that the harrowing battle of the past few months had ended. Her death led to difficult conversations with his aging father, one of which addressed his mother’s wish for cremation, which infuriated his father, who never knew of said wish. A trip to the cemetery, more talk, an argument about burial, the ongoing grief that fueled their conflict about what to do with her body. Her children honored her wishes and proceeded with cremation, but then the talks stalled. Recently I realized we never talked about what they did with her ashes. So yesterday morning I asked, “Where are they? Are they with your dad?”

He responded, “No, they’re downstairs.”

“Here? In our house? Where?"

“They’re in the storage room.”

The storage room. I do yoga down there. All our old shit is down there. My mother-in-law is in there? 

Yes, I know it’s not her, but it’s the remains of the body she lived in. Mind you, my mother-in-law was a fastidious housekeeper, a precise person who didn’t suffer fools or a mess. And that’s where she is?

I’ve wanted to tackle the topic of STUFF with my smart, kind husband for years, and now I find myself at perhaps the ultimate expression of his hoarding. The rest of the day went on with no further mention of the matter because I wanted to honor the anniversary, which he was clearly pondering throughout the day. But now, it’s the day after and, well, she’s still down there.

I’m a high school English teacher, so I know there’s a story or meditation or poem to be written about this discovery, but what might you say about this matter? I’m inclined to insist his family make a decision and do something, but my attempts at control in this way have never proven fruitful. 

With gratitude for your example, your generosity, and courage—

Fed Up with Stuff

Dearest Fed Up,

I met my friend Anjali in a hospital waiting room the first time I got sick. We were both being treated for blood cancer and underwent bone marrow transplants only two weeks apart. At Day 100, we both had bone marrow biopsies, and mine came back clean, no sign of leukemia. Hers showed she had already relapsed, and further treatment was not an option. She didn’t have anyone to consistently take care of her—her parents were dead, and she was estranged from her brother, who’d never returned her call about being her bone marrow donor. So it was that my affection for her and sympathy for her circumstance and maybe also survivor’s guilt led me to step in as caregiver.

For the next few months, I brought Anjali food and accompanied her to doctor’s appointments, then held round-the-clock vigil by her bedside in Bellevue’s hospice ward during the last week of her life. After she died, I emptied out her apartment, donating everything except one small box of items that seemed important: her mother’s sari, a few watercolors we’d painted together, some old photographs, and her death certificate. I had this fantasy that someday her brother would resurface, asking questions, saying he never got her message, overturning the story—from an irreconcilable rift with dire consequences to a tragic misunderstanding. So I carried that box around from one apartment to another for the better part of a decade, then out to my little farmhouse in rural New Jersey.

Now Anjali’s things live in an archival box in my writing shack, up on a high shelf. I don’t ever look at what’s in there—it’s too painful. But still I can’t part with it. Her things are all I have left of her, a concrete embodiment of her memory, and I feel a sense of responsibility, as if I’m her memory’s keeper. And yet, I often think that if someone else had ended up in that role, they might have chosen to do things differently—to have kept more, or displayed one of the paintings, or, knowing her brother would never come knocking, let it all go.