Farmer Gary and I just returned from nine exhausting days in Madison, Connecticut.

I’d volunteered us to sell Mom and Dad’s house, including clearing out the house of personal belongings.

Spoiler Alert: Mission Accomplished.

Gary and I felt comfortable taking on this task knowing that long-time friend Rus (a semi-retired realtor who grew up in Lowell, Mass., and is a roller-coaster enthusiast) would be at the ready with advice. Plus, my husband has a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, so he’s up on the latest East Coast house-sales stories.

No doubt about it, the nation is in the middle of a Seller’s Market.

Hard as it is to part with our late parents’ beautiful home, it was time.

We arrived at Dad and Mom’s home the evening of Tuesday, June 15. We had an appointment the next day with Robert the Realtor (not to be confused with Rob the Estate Attorney or Bob the Broker), so we didn’t start dismantling the house right away.

Instead, Gary explored the attic and I worked on clearing out dresser drawers.

The first emotional breakdown came when I found Dad’s prescription glasses. It was just so … personal.

“We have to donate these glasses,” I said to Gary, between sobs.

Little did we know, there was something like a dozen pairs of glasses – both Dad’s and Mom’s – scattered about the house.

There was even a pair of little boy’s glasses. Probably the ones in this photo.

It was tempting to keep those little-boy glasses, but knowing another child would be able to see better with them made the decision easy. I texted my parents’ family physician, Doctor Donna, to ask about donating the glasses as well as Mom’s lift chair.

A Hospice volunteer stopped by a few days later to pick up the chair for another Parkinson’s patient. This time the tears were for Mom, who’s only been gone a year and a half. Seller’s market be damned, we knew she and Dad would want us to donate as much of their belongings as we could.

Doctor Donna assured me she’d get the prescription glasses into the right hands. After wrapping them carefully and loading them into one of Mom’s purses, we dropped them off at her office shortly before office hours. Snapped this photo and texted it to her, and we were on our way.

After that, our concentration focused on getting the house cleared out of all possessions and on the market in the course of a week.

A Seller’s Market

Robert the Realtor was right on time. He’d already assured me that, this being a Seller’s Market, we could empty the house and show it “as is.” What a relief! No need to paint the walls with colors that would no doubt soon be replaced by the buyer.

It was during the process of listing “what stays with the house” that we discovered it had a central vacuum system. Quelle surprise!

Robert talked us through “cash” versus “mortgage” offers and then snapped a bunch of photos.

“Should we hire a cleaning crew when we’re done packing?”

Nah, we’re in a seller’s market. Just run a vacuum.

Oh, boy – we ‘ve got just the vacuum for the job!

Robert told us the house would go on the market the following Wednesday, June 23, the day Gary and I planned to head back to Indiana. Our realtor reminded us that, this being a Seller’s Market, we could price the house at about 25 percent higher than what it would have brought a year ago.

As soon as Robert pulled out of the driveway, Gary and I got serious about tackling the house and all of its rooms.

Gary headed up to the attic, where he’d seen far too many boxes the night before. I gathered up Mom’s many large baskets and started filling them with keepsakes. Huge trash bags were never far away.

Before long, Gary started making calls about getting a dumpster brought over. He figured a 20-yard dumpster would do. The first place he called said it would be at least a week before they could deliver one. The next place didn’t have any available. The third had to set up an appointment for later in the week to come over and provide an estimate.

Meanwhile, I was losing confidence in the non-profit organization we’d chosen for donating furniture, clothing, artwork, and books. I’d emailed them a week prior, but no response. The website also suggested texting photos of the items, so they could send a truck. Sent a bunch, with descriptions. No response.

Thank goodness Gary and I both have/had careers where we are used to re-prioritizing quickly, and without any expense of emotional energy.

What did we do? We went to the UPS store.

There were two religious statues we wanted to send to Dad’s brother, Paul, in Virginia. Their father, at the tender age of 10, had purchased them as a gift for his mother in 1909.

The UPS clerk was a nice fellow. When we told him what we were up to, he was quick with advice:

Good timing! We’re in a Seller’s Market, you know!

He went on to tell us how their in-house mailboxes were always fully rented out, since there were so many people who sold their houses before finding new abodes.

“You wouldn’t believe how many 70-year-olds are moving back in with their 90-year-old mothers!” he quipped.

But he wasn’t joking.

Gary asked him about the dumpster shortage and UPS Guy jotted down a name and number.

Thanks, UPS Guy, our dumpster was delivered that same afternoon.

Gary tossed in the ceremonial first bag:

Meanwhile, I tried phoning the non-profit. No answer. Voicemailbox was full. It was time to look elsewhere.

Family friend Lyn was quick to help. She rounded up family and co-workers who were delighted with the furniture and artwork.

The clothes went to a charity set up to help addicts get a new start. The books, to the local library.

And then Gary made the magnificent discovery that many of the boxes in the attic were empty. Dad, a child of the Depression, didn’t like to throw anything out that might come in handy later.

My parents weren’t hoarders, though. Far from it.

I couldn’t have asked for a better cohort in the past week’s grueling work. Gary was an absolute machine clearing out items as we separated everything into piles of “keep,” “donate,” and “pitch.” He tended to be a bit more sentimental than me at times, as he took my hand and his eyes filled with tears. Gary preserved several steamer trunks full of paperwork and photos from my parents’ high school and college careers.

Could it be – gasp – Mom Lear?!

Yes, that’s Mom in a beard during her college days, when the University of Saint Joseph was a college, and not yet co-ed.

“I’ve got one more carton for you to look at,” Gary told me during a hydration break.

My childhood in a box!

I lifted up one of the dolls. Her eyes popped open. She gave me an accusatory look. I laid her back down. Clearly she needed a longer nap.

Beneath the dolls was the toy cradle I used to sit in and rock. And old doll clothes.

Gary told me later he also found my toy toaster. “It still works!”

Little by little, the rooms cleared out.

The first three days were the toughest.

I tried not to complain, but when I noticed my right knee creaking every time I climbed the stairs, it was time to work smarter, stay on one floor longer. It took a few more days for me to realize it was not my knee, but the stairs, that were creaking. What a relief!

Each day, more furniture disappeared, including the beds. The last few nights, Gary insisted on sleeping on the floor so that I could snooze in my childhood twin bed. (That man could sleep on a rock. When we programmed our Sleep Number Bed at home, he repeatedly tried to take his side higher than 100.)

The first of four U-Boxes arrived on Friday. Destined for David’s home in Illinois, it was quickly packed with his (and his adult children’s) choices of keepsakes from our parents’ life together.

“We’re running out of comfortable places to sit,” Gary said with a bemused look on his face. That last day, I answered emails sitting on the side of the bathtub.

Younger brother Bill came up to help. When he asked about how we were holding up emotionally, the answer was simple.

“We’re turning this home back into a house.”

As room after room emptied, there were no more tears. Just determination.

And what about Gary’s beloved dumpster? He’d asked for a 20-yard receptacle, but all they had available at the time was a 30-yard monstrosity. The owner assured Gary we’d only pay for a 20 if we didn’t fill up the bigger dumpster.

They were instant friends once Gary asked him about the business. The owner shook his head and shared two stories about how hard it was to find good help:

“One guy came in for a job interview, drinking a beer. Then the next guy, I decided to hire. He asked what the job paid. I told him he’d need to put in two weeks and then I’d pay him what he was worth. After a pause, the applicant decided, ‘Oh, I couldn’t live on that’ and left.”

As we finished up on Tuesday, I asked Gary what was his most satisfying pitch into the dumpster. “That first bag,” he said without hesitation. Mine? The telephones – land-line contraptions – that still jangled with spam calls throughout the day. A female robot voice cried out each time: “Call from: blah-blah-blah.” We could never understand her. Never.

Throughout the week, I’d joked that since our listing would go live on the Seller’s Market just as we Uber-ed to Tweed Airport in New Haven early Wednesday morning, I fully expected our first offer to await us as we pulled into our driveway that evening.

Nope. It dinged into my Inbox as we landed in Louisville. And a second, even-better offer arrived yesterday, which we accepted. A local couple with an Irish last name.

We’ll always be saddened for the reason we had to sell that lovely house, but we know Mom and Dad would be pleased with all the family treasures we saved and the many memories we’ll hold in our hearts forever.

Please drop in your email address below to receive a notice with each new story.