Excavating

The Old Man was an intensely private person, much as he loved good company and talk. He was easily irritated by those who failed to respect the boundaries of common decency and etiquette, and by those he deemed not intelligent enough to deduce this.

There are two doors to his living room, a legacy from a time when it had been divided. One door was sealed off but, to his intense annoyance,  occasionally a visiting stranger would try to use it, so threatening to dislodge the newspaper strips carefully inserted all around to eliminate drafts.
This sign was hung on it as a deterrent, along with another one threatening rabid dog/elecution/warning! 

Mental excavation was a much worse offence and any attempt at it would instantly be met with the shutters going up. Inevitably  I am now finding in my digging and delving through his personal things much that I never knew about. I have to gauge the balance between being intrusive and being neglectful. In the end I guess it doesn't really matter either way. When the river of life finally reaches the ocean of former existences there is just too much detritus of the past bobbing about for any individual particles to be identified.