That's too bad about your father.
I know what you are saying about the things accumulated over a lifetime. It makes it very difficult to go through his things. I still have a few boxes of my dad's stuff that I need to get rid of and he died in 2016.
He was far from a packrat so the things he had were things he liked. I look at them and get to wondering where he was when he bought it- where he was physically and what he was thinking when he bought it.
That melancholic road tends to be slow and meandering. I should have called someone to haul it all away and been done with it.
But then I wouldn't find cool shit like this...
https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/Mis...37594056-M.jpg