For years, it was a running joke with me and my parents when they’d say, “One day this will all be yours.” I guess it never dawned on me that would indeed be the case and as an only child, everything would be on my shoulders. I had no idea the weight of going through closets, drawers, cabinets, tool boxes and photo albums could be so terribly sad. To say the process is overwhelming is an understatement, but there are things I have learned that might help if you ever find yourself in my shoes.
When Grief Shows Up, You Have to Go Through It, Not Around It
There’s no handbook for how to go through your parents’ belongings after they pass. No guide to explain the pangs of guilt you’ll feel as you open drawers filled with decades of receipts, letters and mementos. No one warns you that every object might whisper a story or that even a chipped coffee mug could bring you to your knees in grief. My parents kept the cards from the flowers they received when I was born, the band on my little wrist from Baptist Hospital, my certificate of graduation from preschool and all the pieces of a life lived. To anyone else, these things were just “stuff,” but to me, they were bits of the lives of a family of three.
More Than Just Things
My parents kept everything, literally, everything. My baby bassinet, clothes marking milestones of my life, report cards, my class schedule from my year at UGA; the sheer volume is overpowering. Closets packed, drawers brimming, shelves lined with what we called “doo-dads,” so where do I start and what do I keep or throw away? Could there be a note tucked away in an insignificant book as a final message to me? What if I part with something I didn’t know was important?
The Guilt of Letting Go
From the day I started going through the house, there was one question that haunted me – would my mom and dad be upset with what I am doing? Would they be hurt to know the things they saved were going to be auctioned off to people who never knew the struggle they went through to purchase those things? I walked a tightrope between wanting to honor their memory and trying to reclaim my own life.
But, here is what I learned – grief isn’t just about losing a person. It’s about saying goodbye to a chapter…to the physical remnants of a life that no longer continues and that chapter deserves closure.
Letting go of objects doesn’t mean letting go of love. It doesn’t mean forgetting, and it doesn’t make me a bad daughter or an ungrateful one. To me, it means choosing what truly carries meaning and memory and releasing what doesn’t, so that I am not crushed under the weight of everything my parents left behind.
From Burden to Healing
After about a year, I made the hard decision to hire an auction company to come in and help me along with the process. I had made very little progress and needed objective eyes on things, but ones that understood my feelings, and I found the perfect person in Lynn Myers. He was so caring and focused on respecting my loss, and that made a big difference in me being able to part with things.
The process of sorting through things and having an auction, as painful as it was, began my healing. I kept the things that I felt filled my heart with the best memories I could find. Life with my parents was hard, through every stage of my life, but in their own way, I know they loved me.
Life Goes On
The day of the auction, I watched my parents’ possessions go away with people I didn’t know, but I hoped things like the picnic basket that made many trips to Mabry Mill would bring a new family good memories, the antiques my dad had will bring another person joy, because in the end, it’s not about keeping it all. It’s about keeping what speaks to my heart and allowing the rest to go, knowing that my parents and our life together didn’t live in things but in our hearts, and mine is now the only heart left to remember.
