The Estate Sale

The three hour drive to my grandmother’s house was filled with dread. I hadn’t been back since her funeral four months earlier and I wasn’t sure I could handle walking through her front door without shouting my usual, “It’s me,” a greeting I’d uttered thousands of times after she’d lost her sight and most of her hearing. My aunts were supposed to meet me, but it looked like I’d arrived first. I sat in the car outside of her house for a few minutes trying not to cry, but I was unsuccessful. Through eyes shimmering with tears I looked at the home my grandfather built in 1953, the pink brick ranch with the huge picture window in the living room; the window from which my grandmother monitored the world, or at least the comings and goings of her neighbors for almost sixty years.

Sitting in the car and trying to find a clean tissue at the bottom of my purse to wipe my eyes and blow my nose I felt a familiar guilt. The same feeling I’d experienced hundreds of times in the same spot while finishing an important work call on my cell phone knowing Big Red, our name for my grandmother, had made out the shiny rims of my car wheels through her macular degenerative vision and was wondering why I was taking so long to come into the house. The feeling that she was waiting for me now was so overwhelming I found myself unlocking the front door before I remembered she would not be sitting in her chair in front of the window. As I pushed open the heavy oak door I steeled myself against the pain of loss that was already washing over me.

Inside everything was different, yet the same. My aunts had rearranged furniture and I noticed paintings from other rooms were hung haphazardly on the living room walls in preparation for the estate sale we were conducting this weekend. But her chair, the blue corduroy electric lift chair was still in its place, lording over the room just as my grandmother, even at 104 years old had always done. I made my way past boxes and knickknacks and furniture covered with neon price tags to her bedroom. The hospital bed that she had used for the past two years was gone, having been removed on the very day of her death by the sympathetic men from the medical supply rental company and replaced with the blonde-wood circa 1950 bed, or mid-century modern as the antique dealer we tried to hire to hold the estate sale called it. The bed she only slept in with my grandfather for five years after they moved to town from the farm before his untimely death at age 57 leaving her with ten children ranging in age from five to twenty-five.

I went to her bed and ran my hand along the nubby stitches in the quilt she pieced together in a quilting class the year after she retired from teaching second grade. She was so proud of this sampler quilt and now it bore a price tag of two-hundred and twenty-five dollars. We cannot sell this quilt I thought as I laid down on it and drew the sides around me like a cocoon and sobbed.

I knew what Big Red would think of this behavior. She would tell me I was an Owen (even though I’m actually a Primo, I never argued with her) and Owens keep a stiff upper lip. This was her way of telling me and anyone else who had the audacity to cry in front of her to be strong and deal with whatever was wrong. I got up and made my way through the rest of the house looking at all the familiar things that would soon belong to other people. I was not looking forward to helping the family conduct this sale, but I put on my stiff upper lip and moved forward.

The antique dealer we had originally contacted to conduct the sale had reneged after family members laid claim to at least half of the household contents. My cousin, Ryan, had the brilliant idea of photographing every piece of furniture and every knickknack and shared the photos on our family social media page. Within minutes messages began pouring in to this effect: “If nobody else wants it, I would love to have such and such.” At the time of her death my grandmother had 104 descendants. Of course everyone wanted a memento, a keepsake. We all had a particular piece we loved, something that reminded us of our love for Big Red and hers for us. And then there were all the items that already had someone’s name written on the bottom in greasy black china marking pencil. For years and years anytime she received a gift from a family member or friend, or if you casually mentioned you liked something, she would write your name on it and say you could have it when she “kicked the bucket.”

A funny thing happened at the estate sale as my aunts (one even surprised us by showing up the night before from Wisconsin), my uncle, my cousins, my daughter, our dear family friend, Susie, and I greeted the mob of early morning bargain hunters. As shoppers picked through her belongings they began asking questions. “Who was this woman?” “Was she a calligraphist, a teacher, a painter?” “Did she quilt, sew, crochet, knit?” “Was she an avid reader?” As we answered the questions about her life we began to weave the story of what a remarkable woman she was, a woman of many interests and talents. Instead of being a burden, the dreaded estate sale was becoming a blessing.

While the customers inspected paintings and fingered linens my relatives and I found ourselves wanting them to have her things. The nice couple who wanted the painting from the den, the man who showed such an interest in her antique Singer, the young mother who thumbed through all of the children’s books were worthy recipients. Rather than feeling like we were disposing of my grandmother’s life, it felt like we were sharing it.

There were many tearful moments that weekend, but there was more laughter than pain. Aunt Gail showed up with a huge red canvas tote bearing the inscription “BIG RED BAG” in white block letters (one of those reclaimed gifts I feel sure) full of vodka, bloody Mary mix, plastic cups and ice. A bar was promptly set up in the master bathroom for family. Before the end of the day Uncle Steve began embellishing, in jest, the remaining items. A blue chiffon formal circa 1960 was labeled “Carrie’s Prom Dress.” His high school football helmet and pads soon boasted the forged signature of Joe Namath. It became a contest to see who could come up with the most outlandish way to get rid of the last merchandise.

When it was all over we convened around the kitchen table, as has always been our tradition. It would be the last time our family gathered around this table in this kitchen, but the table would see another generation of family, as one of my aunts was taking it home. We posed for a photo with the earnings from the sale. It is the last picture I have of Big Red’s kitchen, the kitchen where she cooked thousands of bowls of oatmeal, where we played cards, where I studied during college, where countless friends and family were nourished. I will miss the green linoleum tile floor, the warm paneling, the copper molds and the hand painted china plates, but most of all, of course, I will miss her. We each took a keepsake, a trinket to remember her by, but I like to think we took more than that. We each have something of her inside of us. So I will keep trying to keep a stiff upper lip, and I will always remember my Big Red.