Wanda Gene

Wanda Gene was found atop a physical hoard of accumulated memories, scattered pain and a pile of evidence of her struggle to let go of anything. Her body was empty but her house full, brimming over with deeply loved, yet persistently neglected things. Her treasures, mingled and meshed with garbage, begged an answer to the question, “Why?”

Possibly, a hoarder has felt thrown away at some point in life so throwing away anything one may relate to, including garbage, feels like an impossible task.

To an outsider her death and her life appeared one in the same; tragically sad. Those who knew her know a different story than what the medics could glean as they removed her body from the house.

From what I knew of her before her passing, and from the stories falling from the lips of family and friends, I cannot define her as a tragedy. Though in a cocoon of her own making, I am unable to picture her as a butterfly gently breaking forth into new wings upon her departure. When Wanda Gene left this earth, she left as a flare, exploding upward on wings of fire. She was a celestial phoenix, burning away every ounce of pain she’d ever known and ascending the ashes left behind.

What sets her life apart from most is how fiercely she lived it. She personified fearlessness, possessing no shame for her life or her decisions. At home is where her fear and insecurities lived and grew. The house became a trap, so like the Great Houdini, she broke free of her bonds and left the pain scattered across floors and climbing up walls. Upon her return from living life, she often had more to add to the house. Perhaps it was her penance, or maybe an offering, for daring to be greater than her own fears.

When my husband and his sister inherited her house, serious consideration was given to setting a match to it and counting it as a loss. If they had chosen to do so, I would have never heard the stories lovingly told by the two of them. Between frustrated cuss words and the ever-persistent question, WANDA WHY? were moments of reflection.

We watched so many episodes of the TV series about hoarders, searching for any kind of answer. The only answer that emerged is every hoarder possesses unique circumstances. The reasons are as personal as the hoard itself, so Wanda’s reasons died with her.

We were forced to don masks and gloves and arm ourselves with trash bags and sanitizer to fight through the most monumental trash heap the three of us have ever seen. Neither Rick and I, nor Tracie had finances to hire someone to do the work.

Layer by layer, over a hundred loads of garbage have been returned to earth by means of either burning it outside or hauling it to the dump. Rick has shouldered the biggest brunt of the burden. Still, with the time we have spent there together, we have managed to find reasons to laugh.

One of the very first things we discovered was Wanda’s entrance into the world of kombucha tea. I’m not sure what kind of witchcraft she performed on it; however, it took ownership of most of the counterspace. Her experimentation resulted in some sort of primordial goop steadily gaining its own self-awareness. The battle for the kitchen ensued. We beat the kombucha tea and sent it crawling away as we dumped jar after jar to the ground.

No-one knew exactly how awful her environment had become. She rarely let people into her house and when she did, they weren’t allowed past the first room. Words like help were thrown around. Why didn’t she get help? Guilt, I feel so guilty for not knowing how bad this was and forcing her to let me help her.  Her sister and brother tried helping her at times, but she kicked them out of the house, crying over everything they attempted to throw away. Rick and Tracie were her nephew and niece. Her love and influence played a huge part in their formative years. They held too much respect for her to force her to do anything and knew her well enough to know the effort would have failed. Still, the mind wanders to futile places when grieving. 

Instead of focusing on the grief, Rick and Tracie focus on the memories. They recant stories and the most interesting ones often have details missing. I wonder at times where those details have gone. Did Wanda hoard them inside herself, or did she hide them in the cracks of the foundation of her house, place them beneath the boards of the floor or hide them deep in the walls?

“Wanda was raised Pentecostal,” Rick told me, “but she was as wild as a branch hare when she was young.” He went on to tell of her once having lived in a barn during her young adult, or possibly older teen years. No one seems to know why, and then the story skips to her days in Dallas. Pentecostal or not, the woman loved to dance. She hung out at one of Jack Ruby’s night clubs. Upon seeing Wanda, a “thick” beautiful girl, he begged her to become a stripper for him, telling her many men love big women. He knew a money maker when he saw one. She declined. The story skips again. At some point in her life she became the lover of a famous actor of that era. They engaged in secret rendezvous each time he was in town. Was this before or after she married her first husband? Did she run to Dallas because her first husband was killed falling from the water tower he was working on? They were only married for a year. She loved him so much she kept in touch with his parents up to the point of their passing. We found some of the letters, somehow still readable enough to figure out who they were from.

The favorite item I found in that house was a picture she painted. She had it hanging behind one of the bedroom doors. She painted three ladies from behind. They are totally nude except for the flowers in their hair. Their arms are draped across each other as they walk along, headed out for a swim. The one in the middle is beautifully larger than the other two. Her flushed pink butt cheeks are double the size of the other two girls. The girl on the left is dark skinned. Tracie laid claim to the picture immediately. She already knew of its existence. Being someone who has struggled with thyroid problems most of her life, Tracie has also struggled with weight. Wanda used the painting as a teaching tool to build Tracie’s confidence when Tracie was a little girl. “We are all beautiful no matter what size.” She not only said the words she also lived the example. She grew up in an era where “fat girls” are supposed to be ashamed and lack confidence. Either Wanda fought the battle to gain confidence or it was always there. Whichever way does not matter. Her self-esteem made an impact on others.

We found memorabilia from her time in Germany. She married a military man named Riley Lord. The military stationed them there and she fell in love with the place. I don’t know why she needed to bring home six ashtrays, or so many beer steins and mugs when they moved back, but we found her years in Germany scattered over dust blanketed shelves and shoved in mouse eaten boxes.

The stories have freely, lovingly, poured out in place of tears that need crying. Neither my husband nor sister-in-law allow themselves to cry in front of others. They laugh, instead, about the times Wanda went to her Pentecostal Church services with hiked up hems and long boots. What could anyone say? Her legs were covered completely. Wanda pushed boundaries and did so with playful spite. She raised many eyebrows and laughed all the way home for doing it. My husband has that same characteristic.

I will never forget the way his eyebrows raised when he found a gas-powered camp-stove he loaned her during a power outage years ago. He recalled the sudden change of ownership when he tried to get it back. She told him no, saying “I need this worse than you do.” She managed to pilfer many things from people with that one little sentence. I’m curious to know if she acquired all those ashtrays and beer steins by learning to say, “Ich brauche das mehr als du.” I also wonder if, “I need this more than you do” is how she gained a shopping cart from the local store. It was found beside the house, surprisingly empty, becoming one with the weeds. I’m shocked there was no kombucha tea hiding in it.

So many things have been uncovered to reveal such a fullfilling and giving life. She square danced, she belonged to a bowling league, she had clown costumes from when she entertained at nursing homes. Blue and red ribbon awards were found in oddly stuck places from the art she entered in local events. She tried to teach herself how to play the mandolin, ukulele, the guitar and harp. She was even a shapeshifter, judging by the variety of sizes of clothes she owned. She shifted up and down in size regularly from what I have heard. She had a doll collection she spent thousands of dollars for over the years, and everything fell to ruin.

During her nephew Raymond's time in the military, fighting in Iraq, they emailed each other. She printed off every cherished word then let it fall to the floor to be covered over by another layer, another year, of hoarding. Was she terrified of losing him? Was this a preemptive strike at the possibility of pain; to bury his words with the rest of her pain? 

When she looked around, her gaze fell upon empty space. When we look around all we can see is how packed the house is, how full her life was, and try to comprehend the emptiness she was struggling to fill.

Knowing, now, the special bond she had with each of the children in her family, I think I have figured it out in part. Wanda loved them and made it a point to be a memory maker for all of them. It must have been so hard to be the oldest child of her siblings and watch each one of them have children when she could have none of her own. I have only asked Rick about why she was not able to have children, and he doesn’t know. He knows she was a wonderful second mother to him, his sister, and all his cousins.

By imagination alone, I picture her walking through her house, her lone footsteps echoing, with no tiny footsteps to echo beside hers. It grips my heart to think of it. Riley’s arrival home from work was salve to the wound of barrenness. When he retired, she grew accustomed to another set of footsteps in the house with hers all day. When he passed away the lack of his echoes must have hollowed her out from the inside. I don’t know if anyone saw her tears. I suspect she threw them on the floor and against the walls in order to go on living.

Watching my husband and his sister, seeing an eyelash or two grow damp as they let go of someone dearly loved, causes me to wonder where they hide their tears. They’re not hoarders as Wanda was, so I suspect they scatter them on the grass with late night, or early morning dew and wait for the sun to rise and evaporate them. The entire family is so different than I am. In navigating and learning their ways of dealing with things; I try to respect their privacy. This family is so beautiful to my soul for all the ways we are different.

For Rick and for Tracie, emptying the house has enabled them to process the space Wanda left behind in their own hearts. They fill the void with love for her memory despite the frustration of an ongoing struggle to clean out the house. For Wanda, cleaning up her house meant facing the lack of having someone to share her space. It created more room for emptiness to grow...

So, Wanda Gene Lord was found atop a pile of unprocessed pain. She left her body resting in the emptiness between the hoard and the ceiling. There are no more echoes from the footsteps she treaded alone. She is no longer afraid of empty spaces. She is free.