The best part of sleeping over at Grandma’s was the next morning. She styled our hair into a 1950s French twist with a perfect spit curl before we set off for ZCMI. She would take us to lunch and then to the glass case of Lladro figurines, explaining how precious porcelain statues collected from around the world weren’t just decorations, they were treasures.

She was gifted Lladros over the years and gave them as well. It’s understood I come from a lineage of women who enjoy a glossy female figurine whether she was swirling her skirt, petting a dog, sitting in flowers, or for reasons unknow, cradling a piglet. Grandma collected them from all over the world or inherited them from her mother who painted them.

For me, getting one of these Lladros was special, a reminder of my grandma and my childhood. These mementos are different for everyone. Grandpa’s cowboy hat. His game football. Her bone china. Even the insanely offensive Truly Tasteless Jokes book he handed down to my teen son. Among my siblings, there’s already a battle brewing over who will inherit Mom’s indomitable rocking chair, the one she used to put not only us to sleep but every grandchild who followed. It is, without exaggeration, the most “Mom” object in existence. Of course we’d love her to be rocking in it forever, but only Norman Bates can make that happen.

Pictures of my grandparents dot the landscape of my piano, sitting amongst them is the figurine once encased in my grandma’s living room hutch. Sadly, it’s these mementos, trinkets and life souvenirs that add vitriol to an already difficult, emotionally tender experience. The predeath claims for mom’s chair are a very clear indication of how impassioned the debate is bound to get.

As I’ve aged, conversations with friends about extended family inevitably drift, often with the help of alcohol, towards stories of impending family drama. It’s practically a party game to vote on who has the most dysfunctional clan. It’s in these conversations I’ve learned about the creative, and occasionally unhinged ways families have divided a loved one’s belongings.

There’s the silent auction where relatives write down the price they are willing to pay for Grandma’s china. Others swear by the Post-it method wherein each person is assigned a color to mark the objects they’re claiming. There’s the smash-and-grab free-for-all. The “oldest child makes the rules” doctrine. And of course, the classic while-everyone-is-at-the-hospital-I’ll-just-take-what-I-want maneuver.

Each method ends with varying levels of success depending on how a family wants to preserve relationships for the next major holiday.

The only way I can see a family positively navigating a time fraught with emotion, resentments and sleep deprivation, is for parents to decide early what their plans are, and execute them while they’re still around. While it’s uncomfortable to talk about, parents need to communicate exactly how they want, not just the estate handled, but who gets what and who misses out. It’s hard to take up grievance with those who have passed. Once you’re gone, there’s no going back for clarification.

Fingers crossed my end is further out but not as far as my husband’s, still together we’ve planned for our passing. I’ve proclaimed to each of my children and Brian, I want to be cremated. I don’t want to be kept in anyone’s house and I don’t want to be disseminated at Disneyland’s Pirate of the Caribbean ride. Doing so is not only a crime that gets you banned from the park, it’s weird. My driver’s license proclaims me an organ donor and hopefully stating my wishes in the Standard Examiner only gives me more support — use my organs, cremate the rest, as cheaply as possible short of a Darth Vader-type pyre in the backyard.

But the logistics aren’t really the point.

What we’re actually dividing up when someone dies isn’t furniture. It’s memory. It’s proof that we mattered. It’s the physical evidence of a life that intersected with ours in a special, meaningful way.

No one wants Mom’s wooden rocking chair because it is particularly comfortable. We want it because it held us when we had chickenpox or nightmares. Because it rocked us through colic and stomach aches and was the closest you could be with her. That chair isn’t wood and varnish, it’s the unconditional love that came from her. I can’t imagine a time we’d crave it more than when she’s no longer here.

The Lladro on my piano isn’t valuable because of what it would get me on Facebook Marketplace. It’s valuable because I can still see my grandmother standing at the glass case, explaining why the figurine was special. I can still feel her spit dabbing on my head and hear my baby cousin not waiting patiently for her turn.

Objects become anchors to our person. And when they’re gone, it’s all that’s left.

Maybe that’s why the fighting happens. Grief makes us irrational, it physically hurts. We’re terrified that if we don’t get the chair, the hat, the porcelain girl holding the piglet, we’ll lose that part of the story that belongs to us.

Meg Sanders worked in broadcast journalism for over a decade but has since turned her life around to stay closer to home in Ogden. Her three children keep her indentured as a taxi driver, stylist and sanitation worker. In her free time, she likes to read, write, lift weights and go to concerts with her husband of 18 years.