Nothing helps you understand who your mum and dad really were better than sorting through their possessions after they’ve gone
Last week we carried an article arguing it was a parent’s duty to clear their home before they die. But Mail readers had a very different view...
THERE were enough jumpers, nighties, coats, hats, tea towels, antiquated dressing gowns, worn pillowcases and useless ornaments to stock every charity shop in the country.
Downstairs yet more awaited me — cupboards full of chipped pots, pans, china; drawers bursting with old letters, bills, cards; bookcases stuffed with out-of-date encyclopedias; ‘glass’ cabinets groaning with ‘good’ crystal.
Not forgetting the drawers stuffed with nothing but carefully folded paper bags.
I remember never feeling so desolate as when I flopped on the bed in the little bedroom of my late mother’s semi, contemplating the overwhelming task of sorting through and disposing of her possessions after her death.
It was probably one of the bleakest, most painful tasks I’d ever performed — and at a time when I was still feeling raw, numb and scarcely able to drag myself to the house each day.
The grief was unbearable as the memories kept flooding back; often accompanied by guilt, tears and sheer exhaustion. Should my mother have spared me that pain and inconvenience by decluttering before she died?
In a new book, author Margareta Magnusson argues that we all have a responsibility to do, what she calls, our ‘death cleaning’ — a horrible phrase — in order to spare our children such heartache and inconvenience.
I, on the contrary, would hold that it’s every child’s duty to perform this last rite, however heart-wrenching. And I’m far from alone, judging by the postbag received after featuring Margareta’s stance. Many wrote in echoing my own thoughts that painful though it is, it’s also, ultimately, a way of getting to know parents in a way you never would if they’d got rid of all the clues about their lives in advance.
It also performs the very important function of forcing the bereaved child to take time out — easing the ‘passage’ into their new status — to move up a generation.
SO, the idea that this should in some way become an advance clearing out before death — however rational and desirable it may appear on the surface — is to my mind another form of denial. A way of pretending death doesn’t happen: a way of making death less of a disruption to our busy lives.
Yes, imagine having to leave your precious work or social media for a couple of days, or even a week, to consider the life of a parent... to contemplate what everything they left behind might have meant to them and in the process get rather emotional.
It’s one of life’s hardest lessons that pain sometimes helps us grow.
But for that, we remain the perennial adolescent.
Of course we should talk about death with our parents (though I must admit it used to depress me enormously when my mother kept asking me which pearls I wanted).
I’ve asked my own children what they’d like most of my belongings. But we should not pressure older people to get rid of everything and almost disappear, as if their existence is in some way a nuisance.
Our ‘stuff’ after all, is us. It’s part of being human. Magnusson advises us to get rid of things that others will have no need of: ‘I often ask myself, will anyone I know be happier if I save this?’ she asks. But how can anyone assess the meaning or desirability of something to someone else? Particularly future generations.
People relate to all kinds of unexpected things — anything from hideous costume jewellery to chamber pots — and even the experts can’t predict why something becomes desirable.
One of my relatives asked for my father’s old smelly pipe after his death as a piece of memorabilia. Someone else wanted an old jam jar where my late husband had soaked his paintbrushes. So who can really decide exactly what will make anyone happy?
Meanings are not determined rationally. To try to make them fit a mould shows a lack of understanding of how things become more than just material objects but acquire symbolic value too. By stripping away the archaeology of your life, I believe you deprive your children of the chance to get to know you in a way they never had a chance to in life.
After all, we never knew our parents as young people: we rely on snippets of information, hints, anecdotes, and photos to find out more about their hopes, dreams, plans for the future before parenthood took hold. We often don’t really know them as people at all, only relating to them as mum and dad. We’ve taken them for granted in their older, care-worn incarnation.
It takes a very long time to unravel the people they were, and what they leave behind is the clue. Every object, from an old china cup to a letter, tells a story if you take the time to notice — just as much as any treasured object in a museum. Why would we want them to get rid of this precious archive before we can explore it?
HAZEL Latcham, 71, an only child, is comforted that the loft of her home is filled with her parents’ possessions as well as her own.
‘Dad was 66 when he died and always said: “You will have a lot of fun getting rid of my stuff,” and he was right. Thirty years on, we still go to boot sales with his tools and books. We end up talking about him and this keeps him alive to me. Like myself, he was a great hoarder and sorting through his things was not only cathartic but a great help in the grieving process.
‘My mother died a year ago aged 97 so I have also added her clutter to my father’s. I have her collection of teddies, her china and there’s much, much more to sort out.
‘Two out of three of my children are also hoarders so I won’t be decluttering any time soon.’
At 76, Jeanne Goulding has begun the process of going through her own possessions, spurred on by what she describes as the ‘rather miserable’ process of clearing out her parents’ flat when they went into residential care.
But her lesson learnt is to be careful what to throw. ‘What you think is rubbish may not be to those left behind. When I sorted my mother’s possessions, the most precious thing I found was a torn piece of envelope on which she’d written: “Jeanne, I loved you so much.”
‘That meant the world to me as when she was alive we found it difficult to express our feelings for each other. This really was a message from beyond the grave.’
Recently I came across a pile of old love letters at the back of the wardrobe. Tied in a ribbon, there were many from my late husband during our courtship and some from teenage sweethearts with
An advance clearing out before death ... is to my mind another form of denial
faded pressed flowers and vows of eternal love.
Who was this girl I was reading about? Even I had forgotten. Would I want my children or grandchildren to know her? I decided I would.
Granted, everyone has a skeleton in the closet. But the only people I can think of who might want letters and the like destroyed are those keeping unholy and dysfunctional secrets, which has to be unhealthy anyway.
I think it’s more the fear of emotion that gives people the idea they must ruthlessly cull ‘clutter’.
The fear that these objects might tie you to the past or even reveal something you were trying to hide. As for me, I would want my children to know me in my halcyon days: when I had mindless fun, took endless risks and went on adventures I’ve long since left behind. I wouldn’t edit that girl out. I’d leave her to be discovered.
Thankfully I have a conservationist son who will probably want to examine every scrap of paper left behind. And an artist daughter who loves poring over books and paintings. Perhaps we’re not a typical family . . .
So I will leave my letters, my box of assorted dancing shoes, my old bikinis, my old fancy-dress outfits, my feather boas and bits of nonsense.
I will leave my hats, the embroideries I started and never finished, my old school reports, travel diaries dating back 50 or more years and anything else that tells my tale.
My family might want to hear it one day, not only to better understand me, but themselves, too. After all, apples don’t fall far from the tree.
Another approach is to clear some of the clutter — together — before it’s too late.
That is what Jackie Lawrence’s mother Joyce wanted to do when she was told in September 2007 that she only had 12 weeks to live.
‘We left the hospital both not knowing what to say. “I need some black bin bags,” was the first sentence Mum uttered. She wanted to go back to her apartment and go through all her things.
‘That evening, and into the night, we looked through old bills, laughing at how little she had paid for furniture. We shredded old tax returns, old insurance policies.
When her health deteriorated, she moved in with us and my husband went to her apartment, returning with the contents of her home in boxes.
‘Before she died, she sat upright in bed telling tales of where each possession was from. She would tell us if it was to be thrown away, given to charity or kept. We laughed, cried and I learnt things I hadn’t known in 50 years.
‘The time we spent sharing her memories helped me to cope with the loss of a special person. Ten years on, I still smile when I look at the treasures we kept, knowing the full story as to why each item took pride of place in her home — and her heart,’ says Jackie, now 61.
WE all have conversations we wish we’d had but never did, things we wish we’d asked about but never dared. I hadn’t seen much of my father growing up during and after the war, but finding passionate love letters he’d written as a soldier to my mother gave a whole new understanding of the young man he’d been.
Reading a reference to ‘La Cumparsita’, one of the records my parents had loved to dance to, I dug it out and had a listen. Yes, I shed a tear but my life was all the richer for it.
So much do I prize my parents’ memorabilia, I bought a special cabinet in which to house it all. From time to time I get out an old postcard or my mother’s ration book — or even use some of the old china — and feel connected in a way I couldn’t possibly experience if I’d never been allowed to find these objects.
I’m particularly fond of a card my mother sent to me from Torremolinos on one of her holidays. It was of a flamenco dancer dressed in red frilly satin skirt. ‘Thought you’d like this’ it said... certainly not sophisticated, some may have thrown it away... but I love it and keep looking at it.
As I danced flamenco for years and my mother before me had danced the tango in a red dress, this little relic tells much about our bond. And I’m all for telling those stories — not editing them out.