An Estate Sale

Do we ever really own anything?

Nothing puts things in perspective like an Estate Sale. Unlike yard sales where you get rid of the stuff you don’t use anymore; an Estate sale consists of all the things that were kept. The things that were held on to for years, decades maybe.

My sweetheart works for an auction company part-time. She loves it! Her job is to sort through items before an auction or estate sale is held. She organizes, prices, and stages it all; then, she works the sale as well. But this week she and her mom are holding their own Estate Sale. It's for a friend of her mother’s. And I was recruited to help out.

The now vacant house is on a lake, a small two bedroom with a loft. The gentleman that lived there passed away this past fall. He was in his nineties I think, and he lived there alone. The house was clean and well kept, and he had a lot of stuff. But, I wouldn’t think much more stuff than anyone else has. Don’t we all have a lot of stuff? I know I do.

As I watched people buy the dead guy's stuff, I couldn’t help but wonder, what would he think? Was that his favorite recliner that kid just loaded in the back of a muddy 4x4 pickup? There’s another guy over there going through the fishing poles like it’s Christmas morning. I wondered which had been his go to pole? Which one did he always grab? I see a few saltwater reels, I bet there’s a story there too. And what about all those tools? I wonder how many things they fixed over the past twenty, thirty, forty years?

But do we actually own anything? Marcus Aurelius wrote, “All that we possess in this life is really only ours in trust. We are renters, and our lives are here on loan.”

Novelist and poet Margret Atwood has written a beautiful poem that also turns ownership and accomplishment on its head—

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The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage

you stand in the center of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this.

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No, they whisper, you own nothing.

You were a visitor,

time after time climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

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We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It is always the other way around.

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It’s not only the things that we have, but even our time that is on loan. It could all be gone tomorrow, including us. You or I could be gone tomorrow! One day I’ll be the dead guy, and others will be rummaging through all my stuff. So until then, I think I’ll focus more on the people in my life, and less on the things. I want to make the most of each and every moment I have with them. That is, until the day that my loan is called due…

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

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