Transcript
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A (0:30)
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart. When a parent dies, there's a funeral to arrange, a will to execute, perhaps an estate to manage, all while in the grieving process. But another daunting task we have to face and maybe aren't necessarily prepared for, is what to do with all of mom and Dad's stuff. You need to decide what to keep, what to donate, what to throw away. Becky Robinson is the author of a new book, My Parents Are Dead what Now? A Panic Free Guide to the Practicalities of Death. And she's here now to help us out. It is nice to meet you, Becky. Well, welcome back to the show, I should say, actually.
B (1:07)
Hi, Becky. Hi, Alison. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, it's been about a year, but I'm excited to be back on to talk to you about this. It's important stuff.
A (1:14)
It's very important. You wrote this book based on personal experience. A parent passed away in 2020, another in 2023. How did you find the process of going through their stuff after they passed? What did you experience?
B (1:31)
Well, it was really hard emotionally and also physically. There's kind of this dual toll to it. They were snowboarding. They had a condo in Wisconsin and a condo in Florida. So there were two places to clean out. And you feel this duality of guilt. There's part of you that wants to get attached to the smallest things. My dad was an architect. I kept a lot of his architectural tools. But what do I do with that? I'm not an architect. I'm never going to use a compass, but it felt horrendous to throw it away. And then on the other, there's this part of you that's like, oh, God, just get rid of it all. I can't deal with all of this stuff. And then you feel guilty about that. So it's kind of a whirlwind of emotions and frustration and also just trying to figure out how to get rid of more complex things. Like my dad had a bunch of guns and I was stymied. That was not a habit that we. Or a hobby, rather, that we shared. So I had to figure out how that worked, too.
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