My mother passed away in May. I've been mostly putting it off, having to clear out her house. It's absolutely heartbreaking. All of her stuff is mostly just as it was. She was in the hospital from December until she passed, so the house still looks like how it was just before she went into the hospital. I even found a newspaper on her bed that said December 15th, so I guess that's the day she went in to the hospital and never came out.
Today I cleared out her spare room, which was hardly ever used the whole 20 years she lived there. That was easy, because nothing in there reminded me of her. It's the rest of the house I'm struggling with. My whole youth I spent familiar with all of her ornaments and furniture. She never bought new furniture the whole time I've been alive - 41 years! And she was quite fond of all of it. All of the ornaments have little stories (though I don't remember any of them and doubt anyone else does either).
How do you do this? Go through your mothers stuff and pack it away - to go where? Some stuff is easy, like clothes and books - I can bring them to a charity shop. Even some of the furniture won't be hard to get rid of. But there's a lot of stuff I feel like I can hardly even touch and just don't know how it's going to get easier. We need to start thinking about selling her house, so it really needs to be done. My sister is going to help me, but it's really not easy.
