If you really love your family…

…get rid of your stuff now, so they won’t have to later.

image courtesy of adobestock.com

Going through your parent’s home after the funeral is brutal.

You live in the bardo of She loved this, but if I get rid of it, it’s like I’m getting rid of her. So you end up either keeping stuff you don’t want or feeling horrible about not keeping it. You have to make a million decisions. And everything is tangled up in tendrils that have a death grip on your past.

I know this because I’ve been experiencing it vicariously through my wife, who’s had to make all those decisions about everything in her mother’s home — and quickly — so she could clear it out and put it on the market.

If you’re in the middle of something like this, I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I mean, you can meditate, but other than that…carry on.

If you’re not clearing out your parent’s home after a death, and you’re relatively fine right now, but you want to save your children a boatload of dog work and suffering after you die…read on. It’s win/win. It helps you while you’re alive, and it helps your remaining family once you’re gone. But you need to do some imagining first.

Your family will have to stand in your house without you in it.