After someone dies, the things they leave behind can suddenly carry a weight they never had before.

After Dave died, I discovered that deciding what to do with his belongings had very little to do with their actual value. Some things were easy to give away. Others stayed exactly where he left them for months—or longer.

I learned not to force myself to move something simply because I thought I should be ready. If it hurt too much, I left it alone. Eventually, when I was ready, I knew.

Grief has a strange way of turning the most ordinary objects into something much more than stuff.