October 9, 1986

There was an estate sale in our neighborhood Saturday. The elderly couple who called the house home for decades are now living in a nursing home so they no longer needed the furniture, lawn equipment, and paraphernalia accumulated during the years of their married life.
Family members and friends spent weeks helping the couple prepare for the auction; cleaning, collecting, sorting items. No small task, this, for each knicknack is weighted to the cupboard by a memory. The dining table, where the family had gathered on holidays, was carried to the front lawn for sale to the highest bidder. The tools were gathered in a box, their usefulness to be transferred to some other owner - never again will the man use a wrench to fix a faucet, never again will the woman hammer a nail into the wall to hang a family photograph.
Estate sales are somber events. Except for the auctioneer who rattles away with his bright voice, sounds are hushed. A funereal pall hangs over the cluttered lawn. Children scooting about, laughing, seem out of place.
People came Saturday and parked their cars for blocks around and walked to the gutted house, its insides now outside. The wind was cool and damp from the north, prompting people to lift their coated shoulders to protect their necks. As they huddled together the people talked quietly about the rain, about milo heads sprouting, about inundated wheat fields.
And as the people talked and the auctioneer chattered, the old couple stood on the fringe watching their life being sold as fifteen cents on the dollar.
In a box of books on the far end of a table was a volume of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The ragged binding indicated the book had been handled often. Pencil underlining marking favorite sentences and ideas confirmed the book's usage.
Particular favor had been given "Compensation," as paragraph after paragraph was emphasized with a leaden undercurrent. The essay begins with a poem:
"The wings of Time are black and white, Pied with morning and with night.
Mountain tall and ocean deep, trembling balance duly keep.
In changing moon, in tidal wave, glows the feud of Want and Have...
And all that Nature made thy own, floating in air and pent in stone.
Will rive the hills and swim the sea, and, like thy shadow, follow thee."
Other ideas had been recognized by the reader; "As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him." "The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes they aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth, which was waiting to be closed, breaks us from a wonted occupations, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character." "Man's life is a progress, and not a station."
People found bargains Saturday and they carried away beds and lamps and tools. And they carried away peices of a life, pieces which will now become part of a different life.
In somber ending there is beginnings. In loss there is progress.... ~T.Stucky