Uncle Edward’s life was the pinnacle of the “rags to riches” scenario. Having been raised in poverty, the man worked his way through repairing broken down lawnmowers, cars, leaf blowers, and other household appliance, and through wise investment, gained a multi-million dollar wealth at his retirement. The man spent the majority of his golden years in the nostalgic guild of seeking every possible dollar that could be applicable, to the point of using his solidarity to rent half his house to the world. His death was dragged in his agony, what my family now perceives what he called heart burns were in fact probably nightly sprung heart attacks he bit down in silence, following his eventual death with no funeral display as our family would have been the only attendees.

A disgruntled teen just discovered to indulge with illegal intakes of marijuana, my dad decided to have me come up with him to New York and help clean out the vicinity. Arriving at a shady neighborhood with sprinkled disdain shed through the pavement cracks of manifested weeds, an old colleague is waiting for us. A previous tenant for ten years, this was probably Edward’s only platonic friendship outside of the family. Common in those raised with limited resources, my mom portrays the same instincts, the man was a hoarder. He made his start was from hoarding, so I could understand the reasoning to this absurdity, yet the commoner would perceive what is detained as pure junk. I found it to be a cool thrift shopping experience, taking home multiple random items that are currently stored within my heaving bundles of nostalgic trinkets, I possess similar genetics.

When I first noticed each door having three locks, I dispersed possible lucrative wealth buried within the walls, but through my exploration with no resulted treasure, I came to realize the man’s weakness, paranoia. I’m pretty lax on security with my possessions, faith in that a potential thief would sift through my possessions only to realize the items’ currency value is useless. So, the idea of spending the time and money on just one lock’s installation would spawn from an insisting urge that one of my items runs a risk of being stolen, since I have a room with a lock already, that urge is quenched. I would never lock up what I would find in a dump in fear that someone would break in and steal and take precious minutes take to sift through the monuments of filth.

My father told me the greatness of Uncle Edward, helping his sister, my grandma, through a financial crisis in the family. But family was the extent of donations, he kept his handouts outside blood relations adrift. I see the man’s valor in his accomplishments, but was he happy? His only known splurge was cookies, other than that, into the savings account. Where was his family? While kids are still set at a distance, the majority of the reason I’m working towards a fortuitous future is so that it can be shared with a wife I can’t live a day without. This was unseen in the man’s life, breaking off relationships based on assertions of the other’s deceiving intentions, always believing they were only after his money, they were always a gold digger to him.

The tasks of cleaning out this man’s history involved about five hours of labor with the use of an actual dump truck needing to be rented. What we didn’t keep to bring home, thrown in the back of the truck. All his obsessions he stored in hibernation, in the back. All his built purpose in life, the blueprint to his madness, what conserved his origin, in the back. The man’s glorified ingenuity, the entire reason my dad brought me all the way up this eight-hour drive, in the back. His work ethic alone shunned any pride within that of my own, encompassing the derailing determination to pick up the seemingly rotted and be able to syringe and extracted profit, but for what? This impact made me realize that there must be a point to earning a fortune. To shed the wealth with those I care for, oblige to fall into a trusting relationship that can lead to a marriage with kids. Without this, where’s the reason? The Scrooge of New England without Christmas Eve, the Willy Loman who never wed, I saw the man’s resemblance to his home setting in New York, cold and hard.