Garbage collection absent use of special instructions

Garbage collection processing is facilitated. Based on execution of a load instruction and determining that an address of an object pointer to be loaded is located in a pointer storage area and the object pointer indicates a location within a selected portion of memory undergoing garbage collection, processing control is obtained by a handler executing within a processor of the computing environment. The handler obtains the object pointer from the pointer storage area, and determines whether the object pointer is to be modified. If the object pointer is to be modified, the handler modifies the object pointer. The handler may then store the modified object pointer in a selected location.