Lives in Perspective

These items didn’t sell. They sit on dusty shelves and tables, marked with low-priced stickers. I feel odd as I pull clothes from the closet and fold them: shirts, pants, dresses. Some clothing is worn out, some items are fresh with store tags still attached, revealing unfulfilled plans. As I take the dolls out of their glass display cases and stuff them into plastic bags, I feel as if I’m invading a space once occupied by love, strife, laughter, and tears. We have permission to be here, though, and while we're here we learn, little by little, about the owner of these things and how they lived their lives.

Some days I’m assigned to the estate sale preparation: sorting, cleaning, assigning prices. One weekend I may work a sale: answering questions, carrying furniture, chatting it up with buyers. Today I’m working a cleanout.

The quality of an estate sale varies; some homes are full of high-dollar furniture and desirable collectibles. Others, not so much. Today we’re packing away clothing, knick-knacks, and items destined for charities. We sort medical items to be donated, and set blankets, housewares, and candles aside for the homeless. A dumpster is parked in the driveway for whatever we determine is trash.

A discarded check stub tells me where they worked; I see the places where they traveled when a photo album turns up, trips taken with family. While setting up for a sale or packing up afterward, I observe a life on display: vinyl albums, cassettes, and CDs of country-western, pop, and Polish music. An autographed Tony Orlando program celebrates a trip to Branson, Missouri. Sewing machines, cross stitch material, and tools reveal hobbies. Boxes of camping gear reflect outdoor family fun once enjoyed. Medicine bottles document the ailments from which they suffered. Other personal items to be sorted show the decline of later years: a cane, a bathtub bench, a toilet seat riser, a box of adult diapers.

An extensive (and expensive) collection of model trains, tracks, and associated mountains, bridges, and buildings—a lifetime of work—is taken apart, piece by piece, priced, tagged, and sold at bargain prices. Dust covers the remaining village where trains passed, disappearing into tunnels and then reappearing (to the delight of grandchildren). Now it's a ghost town to be torn apart and tossed. We stack electric hand tools in a pile for scrap, along with the remains of unfinished projects.

The collection of accumulated things is sometimes amazing. The value that one might place on a collectible item often doesn’t coincide with that assigned at the estate sale preparation. Buyers who eagerly line up at the front door early in the morning are expecting something else; they’re looking for a bargain.

These people may have died; they might be in assisted living now—we don’t always know the whole story. While working here I feel sadness and a new perspective as I reflect on the things that occupy our existence while we’re alive. The “things” that we collect, the things that were once so important to us, are boxed up, bagged, and sent away somewhere, or trashed. So many once-cherished parts of our lives are no longer handed down as they were in the past; the kids don’t want the fancy cups and dishes or the hutch that once displayed them. Many of the items are even refused by charitable organizations, and some of the things are tossed, unceremoniously, into the dumpster.

The shells of homes, once filled with the warmth of family, are stripped bare of their things and prepared for another life (and more things) to fill their spaces.