This blog started with a house full of things I didn’t know what to do with.
After my father died, I began going through his home — sorting through decades of objects, photographs, and small, ordinary things that turned out to carry much more emotional weight than I expected. I never held on to those things so tight until I had to let them go.
I’m turning sixty this year, and I’ve been estranged from most of my family for a long time. That’s part of this story too, even when it isn’t the subject of a particular post. I’m not trying to resolve it here or explain it fully, only to be honest about what this process has stirred up.
Letters from Here is part decluttering journal, part memoir. Some posts are about the practical and often painful process of administering an estate and closing out a person’s life. Other posts turn to my small condo, which is overrun with clutter and which I intend to clean out properly so that I can enjoy it, so that my grandsons can have some semblance of a “normal” life while they’re living under my roof, and so that my daughter doesn’t get stuck with sorting through my stuff after I die.
I’m keeping this blog mostly for my daughter. I want to leave her a kind of “history of me” in hopes of providing her with some grounding after so many years in family exile.
I don’t have a set posting schedule right now, and I don’t have this all figured out. Some weeks there will be a lot to say, other weeks nothing. I want to try and capture memories before there’s no one for my daughter left to ask.