Impacted by different methods of grieving

[100milesperhour]

How do you cope when others want to make a marathon out of sorting the house out, so that when you go ‘choices’ over what’s sentimental have already been made for you. I went to sort clothes the other day and one wardrobe already emptied, but I was told they were going to sort garage. All the kitchen cupboards emptied too. It’s setting me back so much playing catch up and trying to get over shock each time. It’s silly every day things I wanted to take a bit of.

Ask them not to do that without you there. My sibling and I (and respective spouses) spent 4 days doing this together. We also agreed early on which large items of furniture we would like.

It’s all gone

Agree with pp. This happened to me because the parasites wanted the house on the market before deceased was even cold. Not saying that’s what’s happening in your situation, but it did made things easier for me to be stern with them, as I had no inclination to ever see them again. You have my sympathy.

Have they just binned things? Am assuming this is your sibling and it’s a parent’s home?

It sounds like you all need to communicate more. You’re upset the clothes had already started being sorted, but you made your own plan to go on your own and sort the clothes so you would have done the same thing that bothered you.

I arranged to do the clothes and personal bits from the bedroom with one of my siblings. The other said he didn’t want anything from the room, but obviously we’d put any valuables and photos etc we found aside. It’s a bit ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’ - it’s saying goodbye to some of the memories, it’s knowing for example that I’d seen a present in the wardrobe that I’d given to my mum the last time I’d seen her which they won’t have known, but we weren’t meant to be going through that room yet, it’s personal bits with his writing on them or some headed paper from their business or the big bowl he used to have his soup out of etc - not valuable, inconsequential things, but important part of the process for me. I wanted a break over Christmas holidays with the children, so that on bits of days where I felt semi-ok, I could recover a bit (long covid) and spend some time with my family (kids and partner), without the incessant end of term school demands. He died at the end of November, so had already had funeral, gone through paperwork, met with solicitors etc. I’d spent hours and hours trying to push through every day at the hospital in November going through the rollercoaster and watching him die.

Has the executor been waiting since November to prepare the house for sale? 3 months is a long time sadly

I’m an executor. He was full of life in November, until an unfortunate accident mid November and died at the end of November.

3 months is quite a long time for getting rid of stuff. Did they think they were helping because it's overwhelming you?

A friend had an argument with her SinL because she was pushing quickly to get things organised. They didn't fall out longterm, but its fine in this situation to say that you aren't happy with the clear outs.

Another friend has taken a year to get the house on the market - 3 months is not that long.

Two days before Christmas - Stressing about ordering/getting skips in time and whether his car could be disposed of quickly enough as lots of places closed between Christmas and new year. This was first decided by them at some point on 21st December.

Honestly, OP, I think you need to acknowledge that your personal ideas of a house-clearing timeline are at odds with that of the other person or people. If your loved one died in November, you took a long break from clearing over Christmas, and are still at the stage of clearing kitchen cupboards and wardrobes in late February, I think they have a point, tbh.

I was dealing with the inquest. Alone. There was a pause at that point because one of them went on holiday. They went over the day after the inquest to put stuff in skips and said they were doing the outside storage areas. If they’d said they were doing the kitchen too, I’d have asked them to keep specifics aside. I didn’t take anything that wasn’t specifically mine - why would I presume to know what was sentimental to them? I arranged to do dads stuff with another and found a wardrobe empty - again, I could have had a look first and earmarked stuff, but I was told they weren’t doing that.