Time passes, but never without a footnote. “December 5 was 31 months for us,” says Kelly Mahnke, whose story was told in the Magazine (“To Hell and Back”).
They’re still sober. Still mending. Still living one day at a time and struggling with the challenges.
A fifth child is on the way.
On May 5, 1995, Roger and Kelly Mahnke lost everything that mattered. Their self-respect. Their privacy. Their children. Police were summoned to their Schaumburg townhouse early that morning, expecting to find a hysterical woman who had fought with her husband and swallowed too many prescription pills. What they stumbled on instead was a house unfit for humans, flies buzzing and garbage piled two feet high in every room.
From the outside, it was the classic “this kind of thing doesn’t happen here” story in the comfortable suburb of Schaumburg. Even friends, family, neighbors and the school were unaware of the disintegrating family life that was carefully hidden behind closed doors. Roger left for work every morning. Kelly stayed home with their youngest while their two other children went to elementary school.
Their discovery was at first a haunting glimpse of a breakdown and then a message about how human beings can be as fragile as they are resilient when things turn bad.
For many years, before they could grasp what was happening, Roger and Kelly went from a young, fun-loving couple to warring adults who had difficulty coping with bills, obligations, adult disappointment and raising children. They drank, both for different reasons, and somewhere along the line, alcohol either took from them without asking or they just gave up.
The police immediately removed the children from the house and took protective custody. Kelly was admitted to a hospital psychiatric ward. Both she and Roger were named on misdemeanor charges of child endangerment and neglect. The mess they made of their lives became public property; footage of their living room aired on national TV.
But from the moment they were sober enough to feel the humiliation of what happened, Roger and Kelly surprised a lot of people, fighting with a resolve that they didn’t know they had to take control of their lives and get back their children. And they haven’t stopped fighting since.
Which is not to say that life is all roses. They fell nearly $20,000 into debt paying for lawyers, counselors and material goods to rehab the house and replacing all of their personal property that had been trashed. Recently, they thought they might be able to refinance their home and get enough extra cash to winnow down the debt, but they said they could not qualify for the loan because of their debts. Every now and then, the telephone service is cut off. They live in fear of losing the house.
“We’re pretty far behind on the bills,” says Roger Mahnke, who just turned 40, “but at least we’re facing things better.”
Life is crowded. The living room still doubles as a bedroom for Roger and Kelly, but recently they were able to buy a new pull-out sofa to replace the one that was donated during the cleanup. The children live in close quarters. Meghan, who is in 7th grade, has her own room upstairs, while the three boys, Matt, Brendan and Connor, now a toddler, share the second bedroom. Though strict house rules are still in effect, Kelly says that she has learned not to be quite as obsessive about cleanliness.
Summer vacation is low-budget, this year a trip to Great America. Roger and Kelly still attend meetings as part of a 12-step program and they watch the children carefully and talk with them about effects of the turmoil and separation that left an imprint.
Roger leaves each day to go to his job as a heating and cooling serviceman, and Kelly stays home, continuing to fight her personal battles, such as dealing with panic attacks she once tried to manage with alcohol. She expressed concern recently when she had to go off her medication again because of possible effects on her unborn child.
“The doctor has helped me feel better about it,” Kelly says, laughing. “He tells me if he lived in my house, he’d have panic attacks, too.”
“It’s like we have lived two different lives,” Kelly explains. Not long ago, Brendan made a new friend in the neighborhood and it was clear to Roger and Kelly that his parents did not know who they were.
“Don’t you remember about that family here who had all that trouble with the garbage?” Kelly asked the mother one day.
“No!” the mother responded. “That couldn’t be you.”
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Then, a short while later, the mother came to Roger’s and Kelly’s door with a gift, a framed issue of the Tribune Magazine article that chronicled how they lost control and how they fought to win it back. They hung it proudly on the living room wall. It serves as a constant reminder of something they would rather not remember–but something they never want to forget.