Dostadning

Mary Ann 

You may have heard of Swedish Death Cleaning, Dostadnning.  It was a popular book by Margareta Magnusson a few years back, and there is a TV show on Peacock about it.  Death Cleaning is the weeding through of all your stuff before you die so that your family will not have to do it.  It may sound morbid, but really it is a kindness, a gift to your family.  We will all have to death clean someone in our lives at some time. It is not an easy process, but if the person has done their own death cleaning, the job will be easier.

My brother and I had to death clean our parents’ home.  Our parents both lived into their nineties, so we had lots of time to know their wishes, determine who got what, and disseminate items. Once our mother passed as she predeceased our father, we were able to start the cleaning.  Our mother was the collector, and our father was more than happy to simplify his life which simplified our lives.  

The hardest part of the process for us was the cards and pictures that my mother had kept for 70 years of marriage. It took a long time to go through it all.  There were shoeboxes full of all the cards our family had ever sent our parents over the years. They had all the photographs of us through the years as well as the pictures of their grand- and great-grandchildren. I am the family photographer, so I had duplicates made for them of their family’s lives.  I already had the original pictures, so I didn’t need more copies.  We did make packets of pictures for family members, so they had a record of their lives preserved.  However, in the end there were still a huge number of duplicates.  

What do you do with all the cards and photos?  It didn’t seem right to just bag them and toss, all that love to just disappear in a puff!  So, I came up with the idea to burn them in some kind of goodbye ceremony that would honor our parents and the love represented in the cards and photos.  We would send them to our parents in heaven.  My brother planned to have all the cards and photos shredded, and he then found a place where we could burn everything.  There was a patio/firepit at the local Audubon Society that could be rented.  He bagged all the shredded materials into paper grocery bags – we had 28 bags – so we could place one bag at a time in the firepit to burn.

We had a beautiful fall day with leaves falling all around us, and the family gathered to watch the cards and photos ascent into the heavens.  We brought a picnic lunch and drinks to enjoy while we watched everything burn.  It was a lovely, peaceful time to talk about our parents, say a prayer in honor of them, and recall wonderful family memories.  It took us two half days to complete the task.  My brother and I decided this informal ceremony was the best way to say goodbye to this part of our lives – true closure.  We only had to dispose of the ashes, and my brother had an idea that the ashes could be made into soap for the family.  Nice idea but we didn’t do it.  However, our family’s death cleaning had a happy ending with this goodbye ceremony. I know our parents were smiling down at us for taking this step for them.  

PS – Burning is an environmental concern so disposable of the photos will either go into the atmosphere or into landfills. There is no easy choice.