When I looked out the window this morning I saw the yard next door was covered with our neighbor's stuff. Pear-shaped gentlemen and their willow-wand wives were wandering, picking at and peering through the detritus of his life. He died two weeks ago, and like an Indian incantation, the auctioneer began summoning the greenbacks from the wallets to flow into the wallets of the surviving and bereaving family. It was a melodic and mesmerizing chant, and actually a joy to listen to.
That will happen to our house, someday, thought I. Sometime we will both be gone and strangers will have almost everything we have collected. What we have is in our hands for only a few years.
I looked, at a distance, at the stuff. That barbecue grill, for example, could be ours - the one that has the same scratch that ours had. The one we loaned to Neighbor and he never returned. And that seed spreader, and a weed whip. I began to wonder whose estate was being sold over there.
I called hubby to look. He was having a bad day, already, because he thought Wifie had been waaay too talkative and self-revelatory on this forum, dishing out advice unsolicitedly that would probably result in lawsuits and such. He would prefer the internet be used for Business Purposes Only and that numbers, not names be used, and personality be expunged. People should be in person, thinks he, not on the Net. The cold, inhospitable Net.
He still has a secretary. She takes dictation and puts in in the computer for him. She prints off his emails for him to read. He uses a legal pad to compose letters. On the other hand I am a professional programmer. I will have to show him this because he could not find it on his own. I will love to see his face when he reads it.
Anyway the day got worse, because his beloved barbecue was sold for fifty dollars, and he spent upwards of a thousand on it. So it went with other things, as he watched the estate sale.
We will tell the kids when they die not to expect anything in our house to be worth anything, because their father is about ready to break it all. We will live in a cardboard box from now on.
Neighbor, like husband, was a Marine. Neighbor kept his house Marine-clean. He had just industriously mowed his lawn while we were eating dinner - he mowed two or three times a week, more during peak growing season - and had gone in and collapsed on the kitchen floor. Three days later he had not been seen and someone peeked in the window and there he was. His lawn was getting long and people were worried.
I wonder whether he was saved. I don't know. Hubby and he did Marine talk and sometimes guys just don't get around to important issues. My desire to know him grew cold when we met him, I was walking away and he certainly did not want me to hear him ask my husband if he could borrow me sometimes, for an hour, because I was hot. Hubby would probably kill a non-Marine who said that on meeting him, but for some reason this guy got away with it. Hubby did not get away with it, because I wanted to know why he had not defended me. It was just talk, he said. Men.
That will happen to our house, someday, thought I. Sometime we will both be gone and strangers will have almost everything we have collected. What we have is in our hands for only a few years.
I looked, at a distance, at the stuff. That barbecue grill, for example, could be ours - the one that has the same scratch that ours had. The one we loaned to Neighbor and he never returned. And that seed spreader, and a weed whip. I began to wonder whose estate was being sold over there.
I called hubby to look. He was having a bad day, already, because he thought Wifie had been waaay too talkative and self-revelatory on this forum, dishing out advice unsolicitedly that would probably result in lawsuits and such. He would prefer the internet be used for Business Purposes Only and that numbers, not names be used, and personality be expunged. People should be in person, thinks he, not on the Net. The cold, inhospitable Net.
He still has a secretary. She takes dictation and puts in in the computer for him. She prints off his emails for him to read. He uses a legal pad to compose letters. On the other hand I am a professional programmer. I will have to show him this because he could not find it on his own. I will love to see his face when he reads it.
Anyway the day got worse, because his beloved barbecue was sold for fifty dollars, and he spent upwards of a thousand on it. So it went with other things, as he watched the estate sale.
We will tell the kids when they die not to expect anything in our house to be worth anything, because their father is about ready to break it all. We will live in a cardboard box from now on.
Neighbor, like husband, was a Marine. Neighbor kept his house Marine-clean. He had just industriously mowed his lawn while we were eating dinner - he mowed two or three times a week, more during peak growing season - and had gone in and collapsed on the kitchen floor. Three days later he had not been seen and someone peeked in the window and there he was. His lawn was getting long and people were worried.
I wonder whether he was saved. I don't know. Hubby and he did Marine talk and sometimes guys just don't get around to important issues. My desire to know him grew cold when we met him, I was walking away and he certainly did not want me to hear him ask my husband if he could borrow me sometimes, for an hour, because I was hot. Hubby would probably kill a non-Marine who said that on meeting him, but for some reason this guy got away with it. Hubby did not get away with it, because I wanted to know why he had not defended me. It was just talk, he said. Men.