One of our favorite things to do as a family is go to estate sales. We’ve been doing it for years. Walk through our house and you’ll see the evidence — furniture, quilts, cookware, books, decorations. There’s no shortage of things we’ve found in other people’s homes that have become part of ours.
What I’ve learned from walking through these sales is that you can feel who lived there. Some homes are full of life — evidence of family, hobbies, holidays, projects half-finished because the person who started them was too busy living to sit still. Others carry a weight you can sense the moment you step inside. The conditions of the house, the state of the belongings, the quiet that sits in the rooms. You know.
Today was one of the good ones.
This house was packed. The family told us they’d spent close to two months going through everything, pulled out what they wanted, and what we were looking at was what was left. And there was still a ridiculous amount of stuff. Old sewing machines. A shop full of tools for machinery work. More cookbooks than you could count — shopping bags stuffed with them, eight dollars a bag. Quilting supplies. Evidence of a life spent making things with your hands.
Out beside a barn sat an Econoline van from the early eighties. Looked like something the A-Team would have driven. It had been sitting there so long that a tree was growing up through the front grille. When they tried to move it, the tires had rotted off and the tie rods snapped. Someone bought it for three hundred dollars for the engine. The rest was gone.
I think about this stuff every time we go to one of these sales. One day, someone is going to walk through my house. They’re going to look at what I left behind and get a sense of who I was. They’re going to feel something when they step through the door.
I want them to feel the good kind. The kind that says this person was here on purpose.
One day there won’t be any time left. Today there is.
David Willis 