Estate Sale

Bits and pieces of lives

Your life condensed into piles.
You've left us. And in the process,
left everything behind.
You truly cannot take it with you.
The big things were sorted out in your will,
but the small things are oft forgotten. You
were the last of your generation
and those gone before.
You were the keeper of the memories.
Your passing didn't include passing
on all the generational stories.

Great-great-grandfather's picture--
the one in the ornate, golden frame
that graced the hallway:
the one you talked to as you passed by
telling him of his
great-great-grandson's winning run,
of how his farming tools frame the den,
and of his progeny who have multiplied
such that you never get to see them all
in one place because they are scattered
hither and yon. Someone tossed it
in the dumpster, along with the piano
no one has room for, the piano you
once played, and that your
children learned Chopsticks on.
Other stuff none of us remember seeing before--
that stuff, prized by you,
means nothing now.

I go through a box
by the dumpster. My grandmother's
report cards, a family-grouped black and white photo
full of people, family: but I don't know
who they are. Or were. A blue ribbon
from the county fair in 1934. I wonder
who won and for what?
A mouse-chewed, falling-apart
hand-pieced quilt, built of patches
of worn-out clothes. I think
I remember a flowered dress
from when I was five or maybe, six.
One of the pieces looks like that dress.
But I can't be sure. The quilt
isn't the only thing falling apart.
Dad's and Grandpa's old pipes still smell
like Bourkum Riff and Wild Cherry. The memory
encircles me, much like their pipe smoke
once did. I think of their hugs,
can almost feel them.

Grandpa's Army jacket from WWII.
The one his buddies all signed on December 15, 1944,
the day before the Battle of the Bulge.
He was the only survivor.
I found it in the pile for Goodwill
and drape it over my shoulders.
Suddenly, it seems chilly,
and the jacket still warms.
Someone will use the flannel shirts:
Even clean, they smell like Dad.
His old black and green plaid one
finds its way into my arms though,
a security blanket of safer times.

Inside, tables laden with the bits
and pieces of your life and those
before you. Pittance price tags
on treasures.
Mordichai's Clock, from 1823,
a steal for fifteen bucks, Great-aunt Mary's
broken string of pearls from Ireland,
loose in a baggie for $1.50. Dishes
I remember being used only on holidays.
Christmas ornaments I didn't get, or want,
but, still, looking so sad in a box marked 'free.'
A framed photo of Mordichai:
I move it next to the clock.
No one aside from me will know or care.

I meander around the place
I once called home. It no longer
feels like home;
you managed to bring the hominess with you.
I sit for a bit in the window seat
of my old room. My old canopy bed,
my vanity long outgrown and long gone.
I decide to go back and get Mordichai's Clock,
taking the picture as well.
But I can't get all that a part of me wants to get.
Feels like the end of an era.
It truly is. Sometime soon, I will go through my home.
Give now to kids, grands, and greats.
Give them the stories as well. It is,
after all, why I wrote my memoir.



The sale continues through
the late afternoon.
Strangers scurry home
with their treasures--
to, perhaps, start new stories,
but they don't, can't know
the history they carry away.
Lost now--
forever.