The Gift of Letting Go: What We Leave Behind
The last few weeks have brought a lot of reflection for me.
First, we lost our beloved family cat, Annie. She was 17 years old, which we were incredibly lucky to have. As my son so perfectly put it, “She was mean and she was fat, but she was ours!” And she certainly was. Losing a pet reminds you just how much love and memories can be packed into the years we share with them.
But I’ve also had two high school friends reach out to me recently because they lost their parents. Both are now facing something I know all too well: not only grieving the loss of a parent, but also figuring out what to do with their parents’ home – and everything inside it. And adding to this task is that no family members live in town.
As a Realtor, I see many different reasons people decide to sell their homes. Sometimes it’s a new job, retirement, downsizing, divorce or simply a desire for a change. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s because someone has passed away.
And when that happens, selling the house is often only one small piece of the puzzle.
What do you do with a lifetime of belongings?
The furniture. The dishes. The photographs. The Christmas decorations. The books. The collections. The things your parents carefully and thoughtfully accumulated over decades.
Some things have sentimental value to the family. Some things they simply don’t have room for. And some things, quite honestly, nobody wants.
Here in North Iowa, estate auctions can be a wonderful resource, but they are also a process. Sorting, organizing, cleaning, packing, hauling and preparing everything for an auction takes time and energy – something a grieving family may have very little of.
I understand this personally.
When my mom passed away three years ago, I had to clean out my parents’ home, organize their belongings, hold an auction (actually, three of them) and ultimately sell their house.
It was emotional. It was exhausting. And it made me look at our own belongings a little differently.
One piece of advice I often give people is to think about estate planning before you ever need it. Talk with an attorney about whether putting real estate into a Trust makes sense for your particular situation. Proper planning can make the transfer of property and the administration of an estate much smoother for your family.
But there is another kind of planning that doesn’t involve an attorney at all.
Start letting go while you’re still here.
As we get older, we can go through our belongings and decide what really matters to us – and what we’d like to pass along. Maybe that special piece of jewelry should go to a granddaughter. Maybe your collection belongs with a friend who will appreciate it. Maybe your children would love to have the family photographs. And maybe some things simply don’t need to be kept anymore.
A few years ago, I watched a show called The Swedish Art of Death Cleaning on Peacock, and it really stuck with me. It was based on the Swedish philosophy of döstädning, or death cleaning, which encourages people to thoughtfully clear out unnecessary possessions so they don’t leave an emotional and physical burden for their loved ones.
The idea isn’t morbid.
In fact, I think it’s incredibly loving.
Death will always bring sadness. There will always be memories, tears and things that are difficult to let go of. But if we can make even one part of that process a little easier for the people we love, why wouldn’t we?
Maybe the greatest gift we can leave our families isn’t another box in the attic or another closet full of things to sort through.
Maybe it’s making the decisions for them while we’re still here.
Because someday, someone we love may be standing in our home, surrounded by everything we’ve collected over a lifetime, trying to decide what to keep, what to give away and what to do next.
We can’t take away the grief of losing someone.
But we can make the rest of it a little easier.
And what a gift that would be.
