by Carol Jones

The worst part of purging the contents of my parents’ house was that my parents weren’t dead. Gone but not yet dead, I repeated, forcing myself to tackle another box, another closet, another drawer.

My husband and I piled the things we wanted to keep in the living room, the things to sell in the family room, and the things to donate in the garage. Everything else would go in a dumpster after the yard sale. We triaged nearly a century of memories, more if we counted the family heirlooms; and it felt obscene, handling […]