The Hoarder, the Boots, and the Secrets

Cleaning the space of a hoarder… but wait, I was always told he was “collecting.”Cleaning anyone’s home after they die is a daunting task. But this—this was walking into a hundred years of life crammed into one modest, two-bedroom apartment on the third floor. The call had been simple enough: Your uncle has died, and you’re next in line to clean up his mess. What no one said was that “mess” would be equal parts history, heartbreak, and heavy lifting.

Photo from Wix.com

Boxes of boots stacked to the ceiling, pressing against the front door like they were holding the whole place together. Death lingered in the air heavy, stale, and unshakable. There was literally nowhere to stand, nowhere to breathe. Our first thought was disbelief: How does someone get here?

Everywhere I looked, the same sight boxes on boxes, garbage spilling over counters, hallways swallowed by clutter. The questions started firing as fast as my eyes could take in the scene: Where’s the bedroom? Where did he sleep? Where did he die? The smell hit me like a second wall fermenting in the week since he’d passed.

If this is how someone lived, then this is how someone will die? This chaos, this claustrophobia, this was his normal. I squeezed sideways through the narrowest of paths until I reached the balcony. A single wooden chair sat there, a phone resting on top of a box beside it. That was it. That was the place where he “lived” inside this apartment. We talked on the phone twice a week for sixteen years. I couldn’t reach the bedroom, so how could he? Did he sleep on this chair?

Standing there, it hit me this wasn’t just clutter, it was a life contained in cardboard walls. Every box was a choice made, a memory kept, or maybe something too heavy to let go of. What looked like chaos to us might have been comfort to him. Maybe these piles were his protection, his way of keeping the world out and himself in.

But death has a way of stripping away the illusion of permanence. In the end, all of the saved receipts, the yellowed newspapers, the objects he might have once thought would matter I sat in silence. My husband and I were left to sift through not just things, but the unanswered questions they carried.

Who was Uncle? We had our own judgments, our own guesses about the kind of man he was off our experiences, but now his story was beginning to unfold in front of us. To put it in perspective, we didn’t live in the same town, or even the same part of the province. It was a two-day drive from our home, winding through mountains along the old Gold Rush Trail, all the way to the middle of British Columbia. We had one week to get it done.

Small communities have their magic, though. People were willing to help. His neighbor's, people who had seen him every day, watched him make his slow climb to the third floor needed closure, too. This building was old, with nothing but stairs to reach the top. No one really knew what it looked like inside, except his longest-standing neighbor of thirty-five years. “I remember the day he got that piece moved up the stairs,” she told us. “My place is the same. Both of us like to collect.” Each day, as we chipped away at the fortress inside, we gained access to more rooms. But then came another twist: Uncle had two storage lockers as well.

“Where are we going to put this when we get home?” became the daily refrain, somewhere between a joke and a plea between the both of us. The garbage bin outside wasn’t just full—it was a monument. We’d ordered a 30-yard bin, filled it to the brim, and still made trips to the dump.

You know the saying; one man’s junk is another man’s treasure? Well, vice versa also applies. In among the garbage, the broken odds and ends, Uncle’s love of Paris peeked through. There it was: the Renaissance era, flamboyant style, a touch of old-world glamour.

And then, buried between the piles, his picture. He looked about twenty-one. Handsome. Tight skin, bright eyes, the kind of smile that made you believe he was going somewhere. This was certainly the version of him I never knew. Everything all faded. I wasn’t looking at “Uncle the hoarder.” I was looking at someone’s son, someone’s friend, maybe someone’s great love. A man who had dreams, energy, and a whole life ahead of him. And just like that, I wished I could have met this man, asked him what he loved, what he feared, what happened in the space between that photo and this apartment.

I could see how the garbage might start to pile up. Life piles up. Our bodies age, and it gets harder to take care of ourselves. He often told everyone he was fine, masking himself in tidy clothes. Always dressed for the right occasion. His generation wasn’t exactly known for “opening up”. By the time he might have asked for help, how would he even begin? In the end, he wasn’t just buried in his apartment, he was buried in his own secrets.

Now that we’re home, with more time to sort through what we brought back, we’ve found ourselves face-to-face with one of his most…unique collections. Boots. Old logging boots. All the same few styles. Tons of them. These were the same boots that once held his front door hostage, blocking anyone from coming in. Now they’ve invaded our shop space, standing in silent rows like they’re waiting for a roll call.

Daytons and Vibergs...about a hundred pairs between them. We can’t help but laugh every time we see them. Why so many? He must have had a plan. Maybe he was going to resell them, maybe he thought they were an investment, or maybe, just maybe he simply liked knowing he’d never run out of boots? Whatever the reason, they’re telling their own story now, and apparently, that story ends with us figuring out what to do with a small army of footwear. He wasn’t just a hoarder. He was a collector.

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Maleah Bajich is a Reiki Master Teacher, Ritual Practitioner, Massage Therapist, and a death doula through Home Hospice Association. You can find more information about Maleah at www.findingrealm.com