“Is that Dad’s fishing hat?”
That was the text my brother sent from three states away, the first Sunday we tried it.
My mother was 82. She was sitting at her kitchen table with a box from the hall closet, and I was holding my phone up so my brother could see. She lifted out a faded canvas hat with two old lures still hooked on the band.
My brother didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he wrote back, “Can I have it?”
My mother laughed out loud. She hadn’t known he’d want it. He hadn’t known it was still there.
That hat went into a box and into the mail the next morning. And that’s how we started helping my mother sort her house with one of her kids living far away.
If you’re over 80 and your children live across the state or across the country, you might feel like you’re doing this alone. You don’t have to be. This is what worked for my mother, my brother, and me.
Why It Feels So Hard When the Kids Are Far Away
Most of us raised our kids close by. Then they grew up and went where the jobs were, or where their husbands and wives were from.
We’re proud of them. But it means the house is ours to deal with, and they aren’t there to help carry a box or say “keep that one.”
My mother worried about two things. She didn’t want to bother my brother with her “little jobs.” And she didn’t want to give away something he might want, without asking him first.
So she did nothing. For a long time, the boxes just sat.
Maybe you’re doing the same thing. Waiting for a visit that’s months away, so yo