My parents’ house will be auctioned tomorrow. The cars and contents were sold at a general auction this past Saturday. The neighbor’s house in the second poem went under contract not long after being listed. More letting go–more goodbyes. Peace to our ♥s! (For more poems written after my parents’ deaths, click here.)
Preparing for Auction
The estate
is possession-poor,
its contents
worth little,
says the Rawlings appraiser.
He lists what they’ll take.
We begin
deconstructing rooms,
dividing
the remains:
Goodwill, Purple Heart, Junk Dogs.
Boxes, bags, and bins.
We host an
impromptu front-yard
free-for-all
(our payback,
people smiling and laughing,
lugging our discards).
First contents,
then cars, then house will
be auctioned,
forty-five
years of life and living it
going, going, gone.
House Update: A Few Weeks
Before Auction
I’ve
just
learned that
the neighbors
next to my parents
have put their house on the market,
have in fact moved out
and moved on.
Their move
moves
me.
The
wife,
Emmy,
brought my mom
potted plants and cheer
baskets even as she dealt with
her own breast cancer.
I enjoyed
chatting
with
her.
Her
two
daughters
frequented
the free sale, took all
the Ace bandages and tied one
around the belly
of their dog,
like a
sash.
Kids!
One
more
link to
my parents—
cut. Not a huge loss,
I know, but not nothing either.
More like an owie
that only
a mom
can
see.
Serendippity 