Do not keep these items that belonged to a deceased person.

4. Items That Are Too Painful to Keep

This final category is different.

There may be nothing physically wrong with an item, yet keeping it can make grief harder.

Perhaps it is the chair where your loved one always sat. Maybe it is the coat they wore during their final months. Perhaps it is an entire room filled with belongings that you cannot look at without feeling overwhelmed.

There is no universal rule saying you must get rid of these things.

But there is also no rule saying you must keep everything.

Sometimes people keep hundreds of possessions because they feel that getting rid of anything would mean they are forgetting the person.

It doesn’t.

A person’s importance in your life is not measured