It took us 9 months to clear out the apartment where I had grown up during my school years and where my mother had lived for 55 years until she passed away.
In the first weeks I was rarely in the apartment, just taking care of the flowers and taking only books and small things with me. The silence was so unfamiliar that I called out "Hello" after unlocking the door, just as I always did. With each box of clothes I took to the Red Cross, with each piece of furniture we cleared out, with each lamp, with each carpet, the silence became more bearable, less personal, more normal, more past, more memory.
