Hoarders

If you plan on dying at home any time soon, please start clearing out your stuff now. Twice recently I've been on calls where the deceased was a full-blown hoarder, and had keeled over amidst all the junk.

One old guy had died and fallen down the steps (or vice versa), and was essentially standing on his head at the foot of the stairs, propped up by all the crap stacked up in the stairwell. There was so much stuff in the living room that the front door was blocked. We had to go in the back door, then edge sideways the entire length of the house through the canyon formed by the ceiling-high accumulations. It took us an hour to move stuff around so that we could get him out of there.

Then there was the old lady who, despite the fact that her curtains were wide open and she was in plain view, laid there for about a week before her daughter, who lived right next door, called us. Mom was in rough shape by that time and the house absolutely reeked. She, too, was completely penned in by the unbelievable accumulations of crap filling the entire house. Getting her off the floor and out of the house was the stuff nightmares are made of. The weirdest part was her cat, who sat nearby and watched the whole process. We were never sure what it had been subsisting on during the previous week.

So, please support your local law enforcement officers by maintaining a tidy home in your final days.