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| I kept the hankies. They were useful. |
I keep seeing things about people clearing out their parents’ houses. Well, of course I do. It’s what happens to people my age. I did it seven years ago.
Here are just three of the articles that I've noticed recently. (Yes, they’re all from the Guardian, cos that’s what turns up on my Facebook. Other newspapers are available.)
- My mum has died - and every decision I make about her belongings feels wrong
- ‘I feel like I’m cancelling out her life’: the wrenching work of clearing out a parent’s home
- ‘Under the stuff I can’t throw out is the stuff my parents couldn’t throw out’: novelist Anne Enright on the agony of clearing her family home
I’m not going to go into that much detail, or write about the emotional aspects of it. At the time it didn't feel like an existential crisis: it felt like a practical one.
Anyway, I’ve already written a blog post, the year my Mum died, called Things I’ve inherited from my mother.
But I lied (to myself?) when I said I’d cleared the house. I’d only started.
It’s a few years now since I had to do it, and I still think about it sometimes. And I wish I’d done it differently. But it’s one of those things that you only do once in your life: no second chances, no chance to learn from your mistakes. I made a lot of them, and they gave me daytime nightmares for a long time.
I’m not going to write about the emotional stuff. I’m going to write what I wish someone had told me.