Grief Counselor

My mom is having a really hard time with the death of my grandma (end of Oct). She is the only one of her 4 siblings still in the same town, so the burden is really on her to clean out my grandma's house. I went to help her yesterday and she truly has a hoarding issue; she can't part with anything in the house. The plan is to clear out the house to put it on the market, but after being there with her yesterday, I don't know if she'll be able to clear it out. I want to help but she won't let me throw out or donate even the smallest things (like the salt & pepper)...I know she is very attached as it's the house she grew up in, but she knows the reality and that it needs to be sold. I wish her siblings were more helpful or involved but they all live several states away.

I'm thinking she needs a professional grief counselor to help her work through this process but don't know where to turn.

Has anyone had experience with a professional in this situation? She's in eastern suffolk.

Grief Counselor

Hugs to you and your mom.
I don't have experience with a counselor but when my mom died, I was tasked with cleaning out the house even though my brother was living there. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Honestly I threw away almost everything and at times I regret it. I still have a ton of her stuff in my garage (5 years later). It is the stuff that I had the hardest time parting with. But now I need the space and I do not know what to do with it.
Give your mom a break and see if you can do some of the clean out when she is not around. Holding onto it will only make things worse.

Grief Counselor

When my step-dad passed my mom was really bad. I got her in with a grief counselor in Bayshore. Hospice care network. 99 sunnyside Blvd, woodbury. 516-224-6531. Good luck.

Re: Grief Counselor

Sorry about your grandmother.

FIL was a real hoarder, like the TV show, where I had to wear a respirator mask and heavy duty gloves and not wear my clothing into my house.
I cleaned out his apartment prior to moving him to a nursing home, DH couldn't help me at first because he didn't fit into the tunnels.

It's hard to do. Most of FIL's stuff was garbage, or it was damaged, or it was just plain old. Yet he had an attachment to everything - he needed it, or he was going to use it for "something".
I pulled out the things of value, and threw away everything else. 5 full truckloads of 1-800-GOTJUNK, and that doesn't include the stuff that I hauled down to the garbage room myself.
He was very limited in space in the nursing home, so he got to take a few things with him. I have a couple of boxes of stuff in my garage, and some stuff went to the cousins.

Your mom is making sentimental attachments to stuff that's not logical to you, like wanting to keep the salt & pepper. It's stuff, there is no memory attached to it.
It will take her time to deal with it, and it is really overwhelming to clean out a house. I mean, I still have a box of my mom's clothing in the attic, and she's gone 14 years now.
Do it in baby steps, start in one room, finish that, then move onto the next room. Don't try to do everything at once, that is when it gets overwhelming. Make a memory box, things that she absolutely needs to keep, like pictures, trinkets and so on.
Her siblings should really be there help with the clean out and to take the items that they want to keep.

Good luck !

Re: Grief Counselor