Thank you for thinking of me, and I'd love to do it, but the coming months are pretty crazy for me so I won't be able to swing it this time around.

Well, Stranger’s game probably does take a lot of attention, hopefully when that one is finished people will sign up for yours.

I hate to see a game die before it starts...

Sorry, I'm basically retired from mafia on the Realms. I decided Quebbs' 2017 mafia was gonna be my last game, but I couldn't say no to another Hybridity.

FWIW I'm a proponent of vanilla-ish games. I hope you find success running yours.

So while I stay with my dying mother, I've been going through her estate.

I have concluded my great aunt had a lot of crap, but some things were interesting.

I've learned more about military models than I ever cared to.

For example, there was a company called "Combat Ready Collectibles," and my aunt really loved their miniatures and bought a bunch of them. She even has two of the packages dated 1939.

Now to figure out what to do with it all.

It's interesting to think about stuff like that.

I mean, back in your Aunt's day I bet she really tried to collect a lot of those.
And she had a lot of conversations about which ones she still needed, which ones she liked.
She has memories of them.

And then you come across them later, and they don't tell the same stories anymore.

Makes me wonder about people finding our old Heroclix, or stories we made or whatever.

Things exist in little bubbles of time.

Very poetically stated.

But yeah, it's all brought up a reality of life.

My grandfather loved Lionel Trains, and he collected as many that he could. My father made sure to get them from his estate when he passed, but the trains didn't have the same meaning for him. They sat in their crates until after my father passed away last November. I opened the crates to see what the collection contained, since it logistically would pass on to me, and it just broke my heart that I was looking at something that meant so much to my grandfather, relatively little to my father, and absolutely nothing to me.

My video game collection will suffer a similar fate, I'm sure.

All we can do is live our own lives, allowing these objects to bring us the meager joy that they can. Maybe hope they will bring joy to someone else after our passing.

To the right collector, that stuff might be Worth a pretty penny. The question is if there are enough collectors to actually drive the prices up.
My parents are turning 75 this year and they have apparently started thinking a bit about the end of their Days. They are still in excellent Health but there's still things they can no longer do, so that's understandable. There's a lot of stuff to go through there, so I am only thankful they do some "dead cleaning" on their own Before me and my sister have to do it.
I got around to cleaning out a few things from my old room when I visited them at Easter - mostly because they are housing an Iranian refugee there now, so it didn't feel fair to occupy the entire bookcase and wardrobe. I managed to compress it to about half instead. That room has been mostly untouched ever since I moved out of there 20 years ago... Found some old toys the kid enjoyed though.

It is a sobering thing. My wife and I have gone through enough stuff on both sides of our family and trying to distinguish between family heirlooms and "stuff someone bought at Sears" is difficult, especially with the added weight of these items being all that we have left from a given relative. Add in the sentiment and you have some interesting situations. Her grandpa passed on a couple years ago and there was a three way battle for a dough bucket. An innocuous, non-heirloom dough bucket that three of the siblings all remember fondly. Meanwhile, the impressive stamp collection was decided on as a collective and went to someone who kind of wanted it, but others wanted it more. Crazy times.

I wish you the best in dealing with things. It's not an easy process. Potentially heart-warming, but not easy.

The potential for family fights has me concerned, but I've been trying to take active measures to alleviate any major issues before they happen.

There's seven children, of which I'm the youngest. Since I work from home, it was easiest for me to move in temporarily to help my mother. While I've been here, I've kept a list of things that my siblings have stated they wanted and things my mother has stated she wants people to have. She has a wonderful long term memory and knows the history of a lot of items within the house. She also has an official will, but it's horribly outdated. My only hope is that my siblings hold to their word and accept that which is on the unofficial list I've been keeping.

In a way, it makes me sad. I don't have a list at all, since most of the items for me I've already taken, given to me before my father passed. The only real thing left for me to take is a mirror planter my great, great grandmother made in the late 1800s. I can't take any large furniture with me because I only have a car to transport things 1500 miles, so that makes it a little easier.

Meanwhile, one of my brothers has basically asked for only one thing (which he got), while some of my other siblings have an elbow's length of a list of things they want.

I'm just keeping my fingers crossed it all goes smoothly, which honestly it should since almost nothing remaining is an heirloom, with most everything having been recently purchased brand new.

Needless to say, it's been stressful dealing with it all.

I can imagine. When my grandmother died she had been preparing her estate for, what, ten to fifteen years maybe? Five siblings, and since my mother was the only one who lived nearby she got to handle a lot of the practical stuff, both when my grandmother was alive and after she died.
Anyway, my grandmother had been very clear about how she wanted her things divided... And yet there were a lot of disagreements between the children. Nothing major, but it was still very stressful for my mother, particularly since she felt like the others took it for granted that she would fix it all.
Things got a lot better once everything was sorted out though.

I cannot stress this enough - for the love of all that is holy and unholy, update the will and get EVERYTHING in writing before your mom passes. I've been the executor of *three* estates in my family - my grandmother, my godmother, and my mom - and I can tell you based on every one of those experiences that hopes and promises and anything resembling good will goes right out the window the moment it comes time to actually start dividing things up. Stress and grief and straight-up selfishness turn otherwise reasonable and loving family members into goddamned Lord of the Flies.

"Unofficial" means nothing when push comes to shove. A couple months after my grandmother died, one of my uncles used a key that his wife had gotten from my grandmother decades earlier to enter my grandmother's house (which she shared with my mom) while my mom was on vacation out of state. He just took what he wanted and pretty much dared anyone to try to get it back. Save yourself the trouble and preserve whatever relationships exist between your siblings by getting absolutely everything written down and notarized as soon as humanly possible.

I actually had a conversation about this with my dad, who is a massive MLB fan. They have a room in their house with selves of signed balls, bobble heads, light pole banners from the stadium, etc.

As my grandfather took borderline offense to my Dad not wanting his old collectibles, tools, decorations, etc it clicked for my Dad that we weren’t going to want any of his junk either and so he’s been cataloging and purging so that we don’t have to go through it in the end (hopefully not for another 30+ years, the ridiculously good shape he’s in).

Edit: I mean, I’m glad it makes him happy now but it’s the stuff like signed balls from players we’ve watched together or his first pitch ball or pictures of him and mom together at the Ranger stadium that I’d cherish. Pictures of all the stadiums they’ve been to (they’re missing like 2) and bobble heads of guys who were on the team for half a season, not so much.

Just a notice for the Mafia games I will be in this summer:

Starting May 23rd I will probably be unable to play for most of summer break, as I have a job that requires much traveling!

Given how slowly my signup is going...

Ohhh, synchronized thread opening! I wonder when that happened last...