Three Hours in a Dead Woman’s House

http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc26/hschmidt_2007/rocking_chair.jpg

Sometimes I do strange things.  This week I found myself in a dead woman’s house for three hours.  Before you call the authorities, please let me explain.  My husband is an auction agent, and was holding an open house for the woman’s estate so that online auction items could be personally inspected before bidding began.

I went with him so that I could help with phone callers while he dealt with people who walked in.  “What size is the coat?” someone asked me.  Suddenly I’m trying on the dead woman’s fur so I can answer.  I counted place settings of her silverware for another caller.  I measured her bed for someone else.

Now I know possessions don’t define us, but they do tell a bit about who we are.  I’m very attached to family things, but this woman had no family left.  The proceeds of her estate are being donated to her favorite charitable foundation.

http://i655.photobucket.com/albums/uu277/aderby/mortality.jpg

Framed pictures of her and her husband together were being sold, most likely for the value of the frames, and this made me melancholy.  I wandered her house and wondered about who she was, what she liked, and what her life was like.  I knew her husband had died a few years earlier, but little else.

I found some clues in the house.  She had no children, but she collected life-like dolls.  Her husband was once a soldier, and she saved things related to his service.  There were at least four rooms in her house dedicated to conversations.  I’m guessing she liked connecting with people.

I met a neighbor who knew her, but who was hoping that I knew her better.  She mentioned how frail the couple was, and how it seemed to take forever for them to answer the door.

Why I found this whole experience to be so personally moving I can’t really say, but it definitely was.  Even now I keep walking through her house in my mind, thinking about this woman I never knew.  I don’t mean to be invading her privacy, or making judgments of any kind.  But I felt love and kindness in that house, and also a compelling sense of aloneness (which probably belongs to me).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v393/witbyt/l33t_end-life.jpg

Maybe that is what is disturbing me:  We are ultimately alone.  I’ve lost much of my own family already, and I know that this experience reopened some of that.  (Then again, has it ever really been closed?)

I realize I’m writing in a vacuum, but if I actually knew this woman, it wouldn’t be the same story.  People come and go and their things get scattered.  Sometimes their stories are told, and sometimes they are quietly kept.

Have you ever had an experience like this?  Please feel free to leave a comment.

Marianne M. Smith
Writer At The Ranch
Making You Look Brilliant One Word At A Time
http://writerattheranch.com
wordsmith@writerattheranch.com