Pieces of a life.
Aug. 4th, 2012 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI went out and about three times today- an 8 a.m. workout, a noonish office visit, and for interviews at church right before 3. At all of those times, the final day of our neighbor's "estate sale" was in progress, and with each pass of her corner, I saw notable and memorable signs of her life being bundled up and carted off by antique dealers and bargain hunters.
The washer and dryer. Assorted pieces of dining room furniture. A well-worn wooden crate, possibly a hope chest from decades of hopes ago. Stuffed into trunks, strapped into truck beds, and roped onto roofs- all headed to new places and new lives.
We've been through this around here before, with other elderly neighbors either barely outliving their estate sales or not quite doing so. But this one from the past few days sold off the tangible pieces of a friend's life. We washed our clothes in that washer during at least one hot-water-heater emergency. We sat in those dining room chairs. There were at least a couple of things we'd given her over the years which doubtless got tagged and sold along with everything else. That's not a complaint (we had weeks, if not months, to pull them back); but it is a connection to the sadness that comes through this kind of transition of home and life.
There's no "open house" cap on the For Sale sign yet; I suspect that will be at least a week off. There will, now, likely be renewed efforts to clean and repair and pray for someone to come along and take this suddenly empty hulk of a home off the family's hands.
It was eighteen years ago next week that we became Sally's neighbor. Our daughter grew up always knowing her as a friend, and a safe place, and an emergency contact on dozens of forms. That will never change no matter how much of the stuff in her life- or ours- gets backed up out the door and headed for places unknown.
The washer and dryer. Assorted pieces of dining room furniture. A well-worn wooden crate, possibly a hope chest from decades of hopes ago. Stuffed into trunks, strapped into truck beds, and roped onto roofs- all headed to new places and new lives.
We've been through this around here before, with other elderly neighbors either barely outliving their estate sales or not quite doing so. But this one from the past few days sold off the tangible pieces of a friend's life. We washed our clothes in that washer during at least one hot-water-heater emergency. We sat in those dining room chairs. There were at least a couple of things we'd given her over the years which doubtless got tagged and sold along with everything else. That's not a complaint (we had weeks, if not months, to pull them back); but it is a connection to the sadness that comes through this kind of transition of home and life.
There's no "open house" cap on the For Sale sign yet; I suspect that will be at least a week off. There will, now, likely be renewed efforts to clean and repair and pray for someone to come along and take this suddenly empty hulk of a home off the family's hands.
It was eighteen years ago next week that we became Sally's neighbor. Our daughter grew up always knowing her as a friend, and a safe place, and an emergency contact on dozens of forms. That will never change no matter how much of the stuff in her life- or ours- gets backed up out the door and headed for places unknown.
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Date: 2012-08-05 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-05 04:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-05 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-05 09:52 pm (UTC)It's still sad seeing all her stuff go. Leaving for Wegmans a couple hours ago, there was a landscape truck with an antique rocking horse in its trailer. I gather it was one of the leftovers that someone just gobbled up after the fact.
(Btw, I've been enjoying your nostalgiac FB posts. My parents lived in Richmond Hill near that Jahn's when their second daughter was born in 1946; we visited it sometime in, I'm guessing, the late 60s, but I'm far more familiar with their East Meadow location where I had more than one Kitchen Sink in my day. Sadly, it got turned into a generic sports bar by the early 90s, and now it's probably just another nail salon:P