My parents’ estate will be auctioned this month. People have warned me that the event could be upsetting. Many feel robbed seeing their old furniture disappearing on strangers’ trucks. While I’m more than 99% sure that I will not shed a tear over any of these objects being bought and used by others (after all, I don’t want them and I had my chance), as I was viewing them in a photo list online, I was reminded of the estate auction where I bought my antique bedframe.
My sole reason for going to that auction was to buy the bedframe. I had just moved into this Victorian mini-mansion and I felt the bed belonged here, based on the photo. I was also aware that I could be the only serious bidder. It is a large and bulky piece of furniture that not everyone would want or appreciate.
There was another bidder, however. A man in the corner continued to up the price by hundreds. I won, but later I saw him behaving the same way with other large items.
He stopped me later while I waited to pay. He insisted I couldn’t take that legendary bed without hearing the story behind it. He told me with wet eyes how it traveled from Germany almost 200 years ago. It had been in his family even before then. He advised me to use beeswax and orange oil to preserve it. He wanted me to own it, but he wanted it to sell for what it was worth. I had been prepared to sell it back to him if he continued talking about it with such sentimentality. I watched him approach other buyers with stories of the items they bought.
I thought his behavior was strange until I saw my parents’ furniture and belongings in thumbnails, looking so much like ordinary things. I had stories for many of them. I felt they should be tagged with details. So many factoids and memories–none of them very interesting but nevertheless magnetized by subtle meaning.
It may be in the best interest of the auction if I stay home. Better that these objects get a fresh start without stories of grandparents and great aunts following them. As for the house, the traumatized ghosts within deserve the peace of anonymity.
