My mom asked me to help her sell some of the furniture in our family home. 

The house is really cluttered with pieces we brought back from Venezuela, family heirlooms and furniture my dad brought back from when he lived in Barbados. There’s just too much stuff.

I’ve wanted her to do this for years but she tends to be very sentimental about things. But I see this as something good. She’s ready to start letting go. Her greencard is in process so eventually she’ll be spending most of her time in the States. She doesn’t need all these things anymore. They’re from a different life.

More importantly she’s ready to tackle my Dad’s study. It’s filled with papers and documents and we haven’t touched it since he died. Next month will be three years since he passed away. She’s ready to start clearing out his things. We’re going to donate a lot of his books. Some of his colleagues have told me they want to start a scholarship or some sort of memorial in his name, maybe a library. He made a lot of important contributions in his field and they want his work to be available. So we’re basically going to send it all to them so they can sort through everything because we wouldn’t know where to start. But this is an important step. I know it’s going to be hard for us. But it’s time.