Entombed behind a large metal door are painful memories that have been hibernating for eight years. Joseph Campis has paid thousands of dollars to keep the pain dormant. So it is understandable why he opens the door very slowly.

Joseph Campis about to face the past.

Campis, 45, remembers his deceased brother, Richard, fondly. He was his best friend. He was a successful professional photographer. And he was a packrat.

A day after Richard succumbed to complications from AIDS in 1993, Campis remembers looking around his older brother's apartment and feeling shell-shocked. "I said to myself, ‘Oh God, I can’t deal with all this stuff right now.’ "

He came across a Manhattan Mini Storage newspaper ad offering free pick-up, the first month free and a following monthly fee of $68.

"I could not throw the stuff away because at that point in time it was like throwing somebody’s life away," says Campis. "I remember thinking, out of sight, out of mind. I decided I would just deal with it later."

It is nearly 3,000 days later, and Campis has yet to venture inside the storage bin to look through Richard's belongings. "A lot of it will stir up memories, and I would rather not focus on the past. There is a psychological barrier that says, 'Let’s not open it up,’ " says Campis.