Uncluttering a life
Letting go of my daughter’s things brought me solace
Eight years ago, my neighbor (I’ll call him “Dave”) lost his house. On the day it happened, a deputy showed up and stood on the curb while two men moved Dave’s belongings to his front lawn.
Dave had been in foreclosure for most of 2017 and 2018, but I didn’t know this. I found out when a man knocked on my door to see if Dave was still living in the house.
“Yes, of course,” I told the man. “I just spoke with him on, um…”
I couldn’t recall when I last spoke to Dave. Had it been two weeks? Three? Had it been longer? I looked at Dave’s overgrown yard, at the abandoned car in the carport, and at the sagging awning cluttered with leaves. I felt like the world’s worst neighbor. But I’d been checked out of life for a while. I was still reeling from losing my daughter Ana the previous year.
While Dave and I weren’t good friends, we were friendly. I fed his cat when he was away. He had a key to my house and had likewise fed my animals when I was away. Our daughters were best friends once upon a time. Now Dave’s daughter is twenty-six and engaged. Ana would’ve turned twenty-five next month, if not for the cancer.
I watched the man leave, all those years ago, and texted Dave to give him a heads up. I urged him to come back and take what he could because at some point, likely very soon, the bank would send people to reclaim the house, locking him out. A few weeks later, that’s exactly what happened.
“The sheriff is here,” I texted Dave. “They’re putting your things on the lawn. You have twenty-four hours to come get what you want before they haul it away.”
“I have what I want,” he replied.
“I’m glad,” I texted, a lump in my throat.
Dave did come home one last time. He brought some friends. They filled cars and pickups with whatever they could carry. It hadn’t been much. Then he left his house behind forever.
In that frozen January, just weeks after Christmas, Dave’s things had been strewn across his front lawn, exposed to the elements and the neighbors, for days.
I took heartbreaking inventory of Dave’s stuff every morning as my dog did his business — a fully decorated Christmas tree, his kitchen table (the chairs circling it like worshippers at an altar), a few battered stuffed animals, two dozen black garbage bags bulging with clothes, books and toys, a wicker side table, broken and covered with dust.
After a few days, neighbors began dropping by — curious at first, then greedy. They picked through the pile and dumped out the bags. They walked away with armloads of Dave’s memories.
The clean-up crew eventually came — a few guys with trucks — and spent an afternoon clearing out the yard. They were supposed to have it done in a day, but it turned out that the stuff on the lawn was only a tiny fraction of what remained inside Dave’s home. One of the workers saw me retrieving my mail and, eyes haunted, said, “Do you have kids?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why?”
“Don’t leave this kind of mess for them to clean up when you die.”
It was a terrible thing to say to a bereaved parent, but I only nodded.
He couldn’t have known that my daughter had died the previous year or that I’d agonized about what to do with her meager possessions. I’d bought her most of Ana’s things of course, her clothes, her furniture, the candles and tumbled stones she’d loved. And, while these things reminded me of her, going through each item with love and sadness taught me a surprising lesson. We are not our things.
I watched, fascinated, as the workers hauled piles of discarded clutter from Dave’s house, removing the framed photos, the scarlet curtains that had decorated his windows for over a decade, an old piano, the refrigerator full of rotting food (duct-taped shut), mattresses, and hundreds of empty beer cans and liquor bottles.
Dave had accumulated decades of clutter — truckloads of it — and it was gone in days. The house where he’d grown up and raised his children had been scrubbed clean in under a week. I wondered if it was for the best that other people were tasked with disposing of it.
When the men left, nothing remained, not even the old car that had been parked in the same spot since the day it had failed to start a decade earlier. They’d mowed the battered lawn. They’d put padlocks on the doors. The house was empty and ready for a new beginning.
I wondered what it had been like for Dave being surrounded by so much clutter. He’d lived for several years among the remnants of his childhood and of a family that no longer existed. But what did I know? He barely lived in the house the year before the bank took it. Perhaps it no longer held meaning for him. Maybe it was just a weight around his neck filled with useless things.
It’s tempting to romanticize someone else’s story — the failed dreams of a broken marriage, childhood toys discarded in a heap, loneliness and loss. But we can’t really understand anyone else’s life, not even when everything they own is piled up on their front lawn. Dave had taken what he needed and moved on. Just like his empty house, he was ready for a new beginning. I truly wish him well.
This was Dave’s tragedy, not mine, but watching it unfold in front of me was triggering. I’d just lost Ana and it seemed to me that nothing was stable or safe, that the world could collapse in a heartbeat.
Dave’s things told me more about myself than about him. They reminded me of my own grief. It had immobilized me. It had made even the simplest tasks seem impossible. In those early days of grief, a rolling emptiness swallowed me. I could do nothing more than ride the days and try to bear it.
And now? I’m still prone to getting stuck in that rolling emptiness. It’s always tempting to stay close to home, to the place where Ana once played and sang and grew. There is a part of me that used to wait for her, hoping that if I stayed vigilant, she’ll return. But even that part has faded now that it’s been nearly nine years since she died.
And yet, my heart still cries out against change. It wants to keep things as they are now, if not exactly as they were when she died. Like Dave, my house is filled with the debris from my past. My psyche wants nothing more than to hunker down within the clutter of Ana’s childhood forever, waiting, as I turn to dust.
After the workers took the final truckload of Dave’s belongings away, I walked through every room in my house and tried to imagine strangers putting my things into black garbage bags and tossing the furniture out the windows. I’d pictured the neighbors picking through it, finding treasure in my old memories.
But maybe that’s not so bad. Do I really need all this stuff? That literal walk through memory lane was a catalyst. It was jarring enough to snap me out of the paralyzing grief that kept me from letting go of some of Ana’s things.
My daughters grew up in this house. One of them died in this house. If I threw everything out, the walls would remember Ana. If every room was suddenly empty, the space around me would be filled with her. If I move to the other side of the world with only the clothes on my back, I’d take her memory with me. What else is there, really?
Eight years ago, I started the process of uncluttering this house from an imagined center of open space. I’m still doing this. There is less clutter, but it’s harder to part with my things than I realized.
Decluttering a life is a slow and cathartic process. But it’s rewarding. It’s necessary. My plan is to continue going through each room and uncollecting its contents, letting them fall from my life until I’m all that remains.
When I’m done, the house will be much emptier, but it will hold many more open spaces. There will be room for my grief to expand when it needs to and room to display the things that truly matter — artwork, photos, and little else.
Someday I’ll leave what will hopefully be a very few precious treasures. I like to imagine that whoever hauls it away will wonder how I managed to get by with so little.
Thank you for being here. If you’re considering becoming a paid subscriber, now’s the time! I’m giving away an original piece of artwork to all paid subscribers and sweetening the deal with 30% off a paid subscription through the end of the year (and maybe even until spring).
A version of this story was published in HerStories.
I appreciate your thought of "room for your grief to expand." There is control in choosing what to let go. I am working on this with my parents' belongings. It is not the same as the possessions from a child's lifetime, however. Thank you.
On February 15, "CBS Sunday Morning" showed a story where Steve Hartman visited the families of children killed in school shootings. Several parents had preserved their kids' bedrooms exactly as they were -- toys, books, posters, personal items, everything. They said it helped them to keep in touch with their son or daughter, but it was also painful just to stand in that space. Letting go is so difficult! I never met Ana, but this made me think of her.