Death comes in many ways, shapes, and forms.
My grandfather died quietly of a heart attack, sitting in Little Rock’s Razorback stadium, watching a football game. My father “called it a life” on a catheterization table seconds after sending his doctors to discuss replacing all of his cardiac vessels with his wife out in hall. My good friend Elaine died slowly and painfully, but mentally strong and valiantly fighting her lung metastases that came out of nowhere almost a decade after everyone thought she had beaten her breast cancer. A client of mine literally lost his mind to brain, spinal, and hip metastases years after curing his liver cancer with a transplant. A colleague of mine was hit head on by a truck driver who lost control, crossed an interstate median, and crushed her car like a finished cigarette. Others have died in their sleep alone and still others have died lying in their beds, ever-so-peacefully, surrounded by their closest family.
Regardless of how you die, however, once you’ve done it, you’re dead and those you leave behind get left to clean up your messes. Ideally, the mess you leave behind should be as neat as possible.
People almost always accumulate many more possessions than they need . If they do not consciously prune their belongings and delay getting rid of anything year after year, then once they die, their children, if they are lucky to have any, get stuck with cleaning up a mountain of stuff.
Parents do not want to burden their kids with a big old house to sell or going through one or two lifetimes’ worth of belongings. But, most of the time, figuring out what’s worth keeping for another year seems just too much with which to contend. And, after a few decades, downsizing all of one’s crap almost always becomes too daunting a task. Every item requires some consideration — Keep it handy, store it, give it to family or friends, donate it to charity, sell it, or just throw it away already.
Most people’s things sit unused for a long time until each thing is almost forgotten. When each start getting considered, however, feelings of fondness for each one get in the way of letting it go.
LifeCycle Planning includes tackling tasks such as this. To help get you started, take a look at this article about downsizing one’s possessions.
LifeCycle Lawyers can help you pass easily from this life to the next without leaving a burdensome pile of possessions behind. Call us to discuss this and any other LifeCycle issue at 410-525-3476, that’s 410-LCL-FIRM.