In the autumn of 2023, I felt a strong urge to go back to the house where I grew up. I wanted to stand in the garage and look at some marks I had made on the wall near the end of my childhood. I had found a few tins of black and white gloss paint and a thin house-painting brush left on the floor. I still remember how, once I made that first dab and it turned into a line, I quickly lost myself in the joy of adding more lines. I drew a woman in a long dress, perhaps a kimono, with a wide belt or obi, and her hair styled high. When I finished her, I stopped.
I doubt it was a great painting by any standard, but it had the right shape and felt expressive. And no one complained. Even though the garage was attached to the house, it was my father’s space, and he didn’t seem to mind my drawing on the wall, though he might have been annoyed about the brush being ruined. He might have asked, “Why did you do that?” which would have been enough to stop me from doing more, but I don’t recall any serious consequences for my afternoon of idle graffiti.
By then, the garage was cluttered with odds and ends, and though my father still puttered around, he didn’t use it much anymore. Early in his marriage, he had furnished most of the house from his workbench, crafting three solid pale oak chests of drawers, a full living-room suite, and a hall table with parquetry inlay. But after five children, he was assembling a wardrobe from MDF; his passion for fine woodworking had clearly faded. He also owned a car that took up space in the garage when it was cold, its large mint-green hood tucked under shelves holding tins of nuts, washers, and rows of tools with handles darkened from use.
One morning during the long autumn when my mother was dying, I woke up with a clear image of that garage painting and a deep need to see if it was still there. I hadn’t thought about it in decades, but the desire to check stayed with me all day. I wanted to go home.
The drawing was probably a copy of something I’d seen. When I try to recall the original, I think of a picture from a book I loved at age 11—the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, a wonderful, heavy, ink-scented Christmas gift that I still have on my shelf. Beyond the Greek sculptures and Egyptian hieroglyphs, there’s a Chinese ink drawing of Ch’ang-O, the moon goddess. So, it wasn’t a kimono after all. The wide belt I remembered was actually a wide sleeve, but the shape, the high hair, and the drape of her long skirt were the same.
This sad feeling that I couldn’t return to the garage wall of my childhood was all in my head, because I could easily drive there in half an hour. The front door key was on my keyring. Nothing was stopping me. But no one had lived there since my mother moved into residential care, making the house feel private—neither empty nor occupied. She had been dying slowly for months, and the longer it went on, the more off-limits her home seemed. Every visit now led straight to her bedside. Turn left, not right.
Even when she was living there, I found it hard to move freely around the house. If I tried to boil a kettle in the kitchen, she’d call me back to fix something, do a task, check on her, talk, share news, or help her stand. This mix of urgency and stillness had been an issue for years. She needed constant care, with professional help supplemented by her children on a rotating schedule posted every Saturday in the family chat with a sense of dread. Hundreds of Saturdays passed, countless weeks. The marital bed, where my father slowly died in 2016, was now used by a series of gentle strangers, and the house felt cared for but somehow impersonal.The rooms emptied as she was admitted to the hospital multiple times, then filled again with grandchildren and great-grandchildren celebrating birthdays we never imagined she would see—92, 93, 94. She transitioned from hospital care to convalescent care and eventually to residential care. There came a day when we realized she would never return to the house alive.
“Does she still know you?” People worried about this for me, and I wanted to say “probably” or “yes,” that she recognized me in some deep way. But I also felt that being known wasn’t the most important thing for me. She had become “our” mother; less my own and more a shared responsibility. In all the caregiving, I was, as always, her least capable child, but I was there.
“Is she still herself?” Either you understand the work of elder care or you can’t fathom it. Over the long years of her decline, I let go of many ideas about identity that came up in these conversations—many people didn’t ask at all. In her extreme old age, she could barely form a sentence, much less hold a conversation. By then, we weren’t focused on her personality but on her personhood, which we honored as her abilities faded.
“Yes, yes. She is still herself.” And she was. She was in her place, surrounded by family who did whatever she asked, and that helped maintain her identity. During Covid, I found her very demanding, but later, she softened into forgetfulness, and the last couple of years felt like a return to childhood affection. “Of course I know you. I’ve known you since you were this high,” she once said, utterly delighted. Every time I walked into her room, we were happy to see each other.
For some reason, I wanted to be at her bedside the week she died, so I was alone with her at the end. Her labored breathing eased, and I wondered if someone unconscious could also fall asleep. By the time I realized she was fading, it was over.
The next morning, the house was full of people planning the funeral and wake. The kettle was on, the Wi-Fi worked, and the TV screen displayed a draft of the memorial leaflet via Chromecast. The place looked normal and tidy. The mostly green carpets were vacuumed by a grieving grandchild, and it was becoming the house I had known all my life.
I went to collect some dishes and found the house empty and silent, filled with final remnants. Everywhere I looked was a still life. Our parents had moved into this modest suburban bungalow as the last houses on the road were being built. The cul-de-sac filled with young married couples like them; the husbands went to work, the wives visited each other’s kitchens, and the children played outside. Our mother was the last of that generation to die. The neighbors’ children were now nearing retirement age. The layout of our house was identical to or a mirror image of their childhood homes, and when they came for the wake, they looked around the rooms with older faces and youthful eyes.
A few days later, I returned to collect some dishes and found the house empty and quiet, full of last things. Everywhere I looked was a still life. On a crocheted doily on my mother’s bedside table lay a paperback of Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner, along with rosary beads and a Post-it note in her handwriting:
If not now, when?
If not here, where?
If not you, who?
In the hall, on the oak chest of drawers my father made, there was another embroidered linen piece, a crystal vase with large silk flowers, and a phone book with numbers written inside the cover—crossed out and crossed out again as older people died, younger ones left the country, returned, or got a mobile phone. Beside the landline was a key for the post box outside, with a tag showing a photo of her first great-grandchild as a baby.There was her glasses case, a decorative upright object lined with fake sheepskin. It felt incredibly specific—this item she had chosen, used, and barely noticed every day for years.
Everything was so still. I took a few photos to distract myself, but it felt like stealing. Besides, the pictures looked trivial on my phone. They couldn’t capture the emotion or the earlier versions of the house that I saw everywhere. In the living room wall, there was a round window I used to wake up to when it was my sisters’ bedroom. Back then, the sill held a china statue of the Infant of Prague, which later became a headless version, then a Belleek vase shaped like an owl, which eventually vanished. When I asked about the owl, my mother said, “I threw it against the coal-house wall”—the vase was a gift from her sister, who could be irritating. But years later, it reappeared; she must have bought another, or the smashing story was a joke. I don’t recall any broken pieces. The owl was there now, needing a good clean.
We pulled out blankets knitted by women who are no longer here and sorted through my mother’s button box, recalling the outfits they came from. The touchstones of my mother’s life were keys, each on its hook or in its hiding spot, along with the remote control, stove knobs, and electrical outlets—all the things that needed switching on and off. To her, this safe place was filled with potential disaster. I tried to focus instead on the house’s quirks: a piece of wood my father had fixed to keep the sliding door from crushing small children’s fingers; a book by Sartre in her bedroom with a bold quote on the cover: “I loathe my childhood and all that remains of it…”; another in the dining room called Three to Get Married, which wasn’t about polyamory but about God’s presence in every relationship. As a sort of penance, I dusted and straightened a studio portrait of my mother that my father had placed where he read his newspapers. Taken in her twenties, it showed her as a gentle, natural beauty.
For a while, I didn’t return. I’m not sure any of us did. Christmas was quiet and, for perhaps the first time in my life, free from any sense of family duty.
In January, I called one of my sibling executors and said all I wanted were my father’s English-Irish dictionaries—nothing else, not a single thing. They replied that was fine, but there would be a system, maybe involving stickers, and I instantly felt angry at everyone. Later, I felt ashamed. Nothing had been taken from me, nor could it be. I didn’t really care about the dictionaries, though for a moment I had believed they were the perfect remedy for my grief, something that would precisely fill the void.
In early February, my siblings and I began clearing out clothes and linens. We sorted through blankets knitted and crocheted by women long gone, distributed scarves, and rummaged through my mother’s button box, remembering the clothes they had fastened. I recognized one from a lovely purple-and-pink tweed coat I wore when I was six. I remembered how my bare wrists, as I outgrew it, seemed to anger my mother one morning on my way to school. That was around the time our grandmother died, and afterward, she grieved deeply. There was a blue button from my confirmation outfit. My sister and I disagreed on the shade of the linen blend, with no way to verify since all our family photos were in black and white. Also, my confirmation photos were left in our father’s camera, never developed, for reasons I’ve always assumed were quietly sorrowful.We Enrights are a conscientious bunch—ethical, trustworthy, and interested in systems. There are no arguments, and everything seems to run smoothly. Signs are taped to doors, stickers are used, yet we still get confused, sidetracked, and lose things, as if the house is playing tricks on us, the rooms shifting into uncertain spaces.
“Where are my keys?”
“Can someone call my phone?”
I open the plainest, most unremarkable door in the cheapest piece of furniture and discover a cloth envelope full of letters. We drift into the sunroom as one of my sisters sorts through them, reading snippets aloud. “I am sorry to tell you that Eileen left us this day at 8pm.” It’s a long-dead relative writing about another’s death to someone else, also long gone. There’s a letter to my father from his own father, written in the 1940s.
My sister picks up another. This one is from my mother to my father, before they were married: My dear Donal, I hope you are safe and well and not overstraining your nerves or your temper. This is news to us—the father we knew didn’t have a temper; he was the gentlest of men. I have been more or less fed up since you left. On Monday I felt worst of all. It’s a love letter, full of longing disguised as complaint.
She filled her week with activities to ease the loneliness. A really nice picture of the two of us together cheered me up morning and night as it was beside my bed. But then, What do you think I did today but knocked it over and broke it. Was I mad? She tries not to worry about him on the road, but she does. I hope I am not harping too much in this letter on safety … I’ll say a little prayer every so often just the same.
Love as loneliness, as small disaster and amusing frustration, love as worry turned into prayer. The revelation is that these feelings existed before we, her children, became the reason for them. And there on the page is her honesty and warmth. She was always herself.
On the first day of clearing out, I mention I’d like some snowdrops from the garden, and a sister says, “Oh, please take them now.” So I get my father’s shovel, its pointed blade so skillful that I can dig up another piece of turf to fill the gap, leaving no trace. I put the shovel in the car to take with me. It’s tall, like he was, and the wood holds the memory of his working hands. That’s all I want, I think. I’m done.
I don’t take his magnifying glass. I can’t take, or bear to throw out, her rolling pin. None of us can. I’ll try and fail to sort or get rid of these things many times over. But when it comes to dividing belongings weeks later, my stickers drift through the rooms and land on treasures I can’t believe no one else claims: five cut-glass whiskey tumblers (one chipped), a bottle of Powers Whiskey I bought for my father in 2010, which my mother insisted on saving for her own wake. A scarf I brought her from a holiday that she didn’t like but wore anyway to a formal literary event, where she cornered Enda Kenny, our then taoiseach, and spoke to him at length in Irish. A butter dish I don’t need. Champagne saucers that may never have held champagne, though I ate jellied desserts from them every Christmas. And her tin of buttons and two last, undeveloped rolls of film.
I don’t take his magnifying glass. I cannot take, or bear to throw out, her rolling pin. None of us can. I will fail repeatedly to sort or dispose of these items, as will my siblings. This includes a mountain of old papers, all meaningful: their itinerary and travel diaries from the year they drove across America, old photographs, and the belongings of a friend who died without relatives in the 1970s, whose mementos were kept in a box in the attic because it was all too sad.
Everything must be seen and felt before it can be released.Items can be recycled, shredded, or as a last resort, thrown away. We must honor and mourn, absorbing the past from each object until it becomes mere empty rubbish. This transformation is deeply draining. On every day of clearing out, the same fog descends. Beneath the things I can’t part with lie the things my parents couldn’t discard either.
My father had a fondness for newspaper clippings. He held onto misdirected mail, which makes perfect sense to me—how can you throw away something that isn’t yours? It would feel almost illegal. I open an untouched envelope addressed to a stranger and find a 1960s postcard of exuberant African dancers, with a message on the back from a missionary priest assuring that all is well. It’s comforting to know. Then I discard it. I discard it all.
In my father’s numerous files, I uncover a gritty parcel that, when carefully unwrapped, reveals a bag of seashells from a beach sixty years ago. In the small bedroom, his stored VHS tapes contain every television appearance I ever made. I come across my old school notebooks. The pace of clearing out is slow.
One day, I tackle the garage, now filled with the plastic and aluminum clutter of infirmity—all of it intimate and distressing: a plastic shower chair, a commode, an assortment of walking sticks. The calendar on the cupboard is from October 1997. And there on the wall is my painting of the moon goddess. Part of it has been splashed with thin paint from cleaning brushes, but some remains visible: the wide sleeve and skirt, the white and gray folds of fabric. I couldn’t be more disappointed. It’s not beautiful after all; it just isn’t. It feels like nothing.
Months later, when the house is finally empty, I think to myself, actually, for an 11-year-old, it wasn’t too bad.
The images from the undeveloped film arrive by email from the camera shop. Most are blotched and faded, but there are two family photos and some scenery from the year we went camping in Kerry and rode the rollercoaster at a funfair in Tralee. The other roll was damaged by a gap in the back of the camera—so that’s why he stopped taking pictures; it wasn’t due to sadness or indifference. A leak of light obscures my 11-year-old face, but you can see my confirmation outfit, whose buttons are much nicer than the one I found in the box. I’m wearing summer gloves and a ribboned pin of the Holy Ghost as a dove. On my head is a long-forgotten, handmade pillbox hat, whose exact shade of blue will never be known.
A second picture shows a faded image of my face with an expression I haven’t seen before—not the open, gummy smile of my childhood, but something more calculating and mischievous. The future teenager, glimpsed for the first time. There I am.
This is an edited extract from Attention: Writing on Life, Art and the World by Anne Enright, published by Jonathan Cape on 30 October (£20). To support the Guardian, buy a copy for £17 from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about Anne Enrights article on sorting through her family home designed to be clear concise and natural
General Beginner Questions
1 What is this article about
Its a personal essay by novelist Anne Enright about the emotional challenge of clearing out her parents house after theyve passed away
2 What is the main theme or idea
The main theme is how objects we inherit are not just stuff but are filled with memories emotions and family history making them incredibly difficult to let go of
3 Who is Anne Enright
Anne Enright is an awardwinning Irish novelist and writer Shes writing from her own reallife experience which makes the piece very relatable
4 What does the title mean
The title means that her own inability to throw things away is directly connected to her parents own habits She discovers she has inherited their reluctance to discard objects seeing it as a kind of inherited emotional burden
Deeper Advanced Questions
5 Why is sorting through a family home so painful
Its painful because youre not just sorting objects youre sorting through a lifetime of memories unspoken stories and your own sense of loss Every item can feel like a decision about what parts of your familys history to keep or erase
6 What is the inheritance she talks about beyond physical objects
Beyond the physical furniture and trinkets she inherited her parents behaviors their unspoken attachments to things and the emotional weight of their past Its an inheritance of sentiment and habit
7 How does this process connect different generations
It shows how habits of holding onto things are passed down The items her parents couldnt discard now become the items she cant discard creating a tangible link between their lives and hers
8 What is the emotional conflict she describes
The conflict is between the practical need to clear the space and the emotional desire to preserve the past She feels caught between honoring her parents memory and the need to move forward with her own life
Common Problems Practical Tips
9 Whats a common problem people face when doing this
A major problem is analysis paralysis where you pick up every single item and get lost in the memory attached to it making it impossible to make progress
