Heartbroken

Heartbroken. There is no other way to describe my feelings following our recent estate sale. The sale itself went fine. The auction folks worked incredibly hard. And in spite of the cold, relentless rain, the crowd stayed and nearly everything sold.

Yet I am heartbroken. After spending an indescribably sad summer sorting through the stuff of our lives, I had hoped -- no, expected -- to feel relieved once the sale was over. After all, how could I feel worse than I already did? Instead, I was left with a profound sense of loss. Grief compounded and multiplied exponentially.

I watched in disbelief from inside the house, peeking out from the window of my old bedroom. My mom's beautiful treasures were spread out on tables in the back yard, hurriedly covered with plastic when the rain just wouldn't let up. They were the very artifacts of our lives, each one representing a memory. And there they were, heaped on tables, covered with rain-soaked plastic. Touched, evaluated, rejected, or purchased by people who didn't even know my mom.

  On a few occasions, I ventured outside with a sense of desperation, feeling compelled to tell the story of a particular object to the buyer. That doll stroller you just bought? I used to put homemade dresses on my kitties and push them in it down this very driveway. Wait! Let me tell you about that bird cage. We had to put my little turtle in it to keep the kitty from snatching him up. Sobbing, I stopped short of telling them to be so very careful with my memories.

A lady I knew bought a box of my toys and handed me back some doll shoes and curlers which she called junk. Hurt, I gratefully tucked them into my pocket to save. I sobbed over my old fishing equipment and my dad’s silver minnow bucket to the point where the man who wanted them offered to leave them with me. I gathered myself together and declined.

 Across the street, my dad's well-loved equipment and tools were piled onto four hay racks. The auction staff worked through rain and wind until everything...EVERYTHING he worked with and held in his hands was gone.

And there were his beloved tractors, the ones he worked so hard to restore, sold to the highest bidder. Yet the value of those tractors was not in the money they brought.

At the end of the day, strangers drove away with everything. The stuff of our lives went on to new homes, and a little bit of us went with each of them.

In time, I will come to accept the loss of my mom, my dad, my childhood home, and everything I let go of that day. In time, I will heal from this pain. But for now, I am heartbroken.
jp