The last sale

   She walked slowly throughout the house she called home for over fifty years. The furniture was taken away this morning going to a  storage shed someplace her son decided on. She wondered what good it did anybody locked up somewhere.

   Her gaze fell upon darkened shadows of pictures taken down and given to family members who wanted proof of their youth. She had selected a few that she would hang in her new room but, It was hard to choose which ones to take as she loved them all dearly.

   Her children held an estate sale last week, and hundreds of strangers fought over things she never knew held such value. In her day people kept stuff if it were broken her husband would fix it good as new. She was amused when two ladies of someplace else fought over a set of pots and pans she remembered getting for Christmas 1947.

   It was a bit unsettling watching strangers paw through her life with no concern for her feelings, only who could get something for way less than its actual value. She didn’t enjoy this sale in any way and left early to let her children play carnival barkers.

   Nobody noticed her gone as she went into her backyard and sat on a bench her “Herbert” had made for her some forty years ago. It was a place she often sat when life threw her a curve, a place where she did some thinking or just relaxed and looked at her flowers.

   The sun was setting when her daughter found her on the bench. She sat next to her and told her it was over and almost everything had been sold. It was like showing her life did have a price. “Do you think there's room in the truck for this bench?” she asked her daughter? ‘Of course mom” she replied as they walked back into her empty house where her life story just seemed to have vanished into the night.

www.facebook.com/mikeoconnor-author

www.michaeloconnorwriter.com

mikeoconnorauthor.blogspot.com