If someone, like a friend or roomate, dies - you are not helping by going to their apartment and cleaning up and doing all their dirty laundry. Loved ones (moms, wives, daughters) want to have the smell of that person just that one last time, and if you "help" by washing all the clothes, you're not really helping.
"Going into Kevin's apartment after the crash was the hardest thing that I have ever had to do. The first thing that I did was go into his room and open his dresser drawers. Everything was clean, no dirty laundry, no smell. Someone had inadvertently cleaned the apartment. People have no idea how much you need that. My sister-in-law had the same thing. Her daughter died, and her sister laundered her clothes. It's like someone yanked your teeth out."
- Rose Marie Kief, whose son Kevin died in Swissair 111 (Sept 2, 1998), excerpt from an interview 15 months after the crash...
pensive