Here's To You

We went only to find an inexpensive bookcase for the basement, to give the homeless books in stacks and bags a more dignified place to be.  And we did find one, just the right size, and on half-price sale.  Then things aligned even better when there was a break in the awful weather to load it up and drive all of an entire block home.  This estate sale was right behind us!

I don't recall another estate sale previously in our neighborhood despite the fact that people are often moving in and out, more than half the time due to age.  Even without exterior maintenance to worry about, keeping up with a home and your other needs gets to be too much at some point.  We hear some have passed away after a stay in a retirement home; others we wonder about.  But in this case, we had never even seen the lady who lived there behind us or knew who she was -- for twenty years.  And in that block of four townhomes, we have never seen two of the others either.  It is somewhat eerie.

We asked the sale managers about whose bookcase we were hauling away, and they told us she was widowed in 2000, her husband was a pretty prominent local attorney, and she had children and grandchildren who apparently did not want much of the possessions of a long lifetime.  I surmised they had lived in a bigger home at one time and entertained regularly, based on the large amount of quality glassware and several complete sets of fine china.  You can't take much with you to the retirement home, but it must have been stressful to leave most everything behind.

It was sad to see the late husband's personalized Penn State mug, dated 1954, among the ceramic items. You would think one of the family would have taken it, at least, as a remembrance.  After seeing that, I paused, looked around further, and saw a set of four coupe glasses with green stems, in new condition.  I don't know what the sale managers do with everything that wouldn't sell, but I knew what would be done with them.  They were going to come home with us, to remember the elegant life of people we'd never met and never would.  Lives should not disappear and be forgotten so quickly.