They Couldn't Take It With Them, So Here You Are

When you go to a garage sale, you sort through a neighbor's unwanted and surplus stuff; obsolete electronics, outgrown toys & clothes, strewn over a lawn, piled up on card tables. Estate sales, though, if they really are estate sales, involve dead people. Someone's Dad died ten years ago, and when Mom died last year they had to deal with what they left behind. Sounds crass, doesn't it?

That's probably why the kids usually hire other people to conduct the sale. Who wants to witness the antique dealing sharks descend upon things that hold memories, make snarky comments and try to nickel and dime the sellers to death (enough death, already)! Likewise, shoppers don't really want to connect to the death part, the still-grieving relatives, etc.

This weekend I went to two estate sales that compelled me to think about the dead person who left the goodies behind. In the first one I saw a picture of an elderly lady in a frame right on the card table where you laid your money down for the goodies. The seller looked just like her, so I had to ask if it was her Mom. Yes it was. She told me the item I was buying belonged to her grandmother, and I think her mom lived to about 100. I thought it was cool that she had her mom's picture right there. I didn't get creeped out until she started talking about Teresa being a good Catholic name (I didn't volunteer that as the offspring of a parent who obtained an annulment, I can't take the sacraments; but considering only one of my parents did this, does this make me half a bastardess? Can I just take a smaller sip of wine and half a host? I digress). Anyway, thanks to this lady for selling me a 10-foot long piece of beautiful, intact, Victorian-era passementerie!

The other sale I visited was that of a really neat lady whom I met about a year ago through the Portland Bead Society. She traveled the world and offered selections from her collection to the public for sale when she was still alive. I vividly recall her post card ad showing her immersed in beads in her bathtub. What a woman! But (to be crass), now dead. One of her close friends was shopping at the sale, mentioned how odd she felt. She said she invoked her dead friend on her way over to the sale, for moral support.

Please note that the bead-woven piece with the swastika is from India, probably Gujarat state, and has nothing to do with nazi madness. For more information about non-nazi swastikas, please visit www.manwoman.net and also look it up on wikipedia before you freak out!

One sale, from which I mananged to find a cool artifact for twenty-five cents (a clean empty wig/fall box, bright orange textured plastic, with clear window on top, with label reading "wigs by Garymartin Made in America by Americans), was administered by the daughter of the deceased, who operated a beauty parlor in her basement since the 1950s. Note to all future estate sale conductors: I know you loved your mom very dearly and that she left behind some unique vintage items, but purty-please: throw the partially used douche bottle in the trash, where it should have been thrown 35 years ago...

Note that I'm using the term "dead" instead of "passed on" and other euphemisms. I grew up hearing euphemisms and this is part of my effort to be more accurate in the way I communicate.

All this makes me think: I'll start having to keep making younger friends as I grow older, so that they can have a field day with all the crazy stuff I've left behind. I vow to make it worthwhile and not gross ya out. And someone had better keep a working stereo with a turntable for all the great music!