Make a List of Everything You Have to Lose
A four-step guide to cleaning out your parents’ house after they die
The first item on any list, my mom always said, should be to make a list. That way, you can cross something off immediately.
When my mother died last year, she left her affairs well-organized — unsurprising, for someone with her talent for list-making. But after many months of declining health, her death came so suddenly that my sister and I never got to have that all-important conversation about her wishes for her memorial, her bequests, and what she might want done with her things.
Her things. That summer, after my mother’s death, it fell to my sister and me as her beneficiaries to imagine a thoughtful answer to the last question either of us wanted to consider: What should we do with your things, Mom?
My mother had always worked hard, building her career and putting her two girls through college on her own, and she built a home that was warm and lovely. By the time she died at age 68, she had amassed an impressive collection of art prints and a house full of interesting objects. Among friends, a weekend at her house was known as a stay at “Hotel Connie.” On her dresser were a few dozen decorative glass bottles she’d picked up over the years, each one lovely and delicate as a…
