Estate Sale

The last couple of  weeks, this one especially, I have been consumed with the Estate Sale.  I felt the whole range of emotions, sadness, anger, despair, frustration.  I couldn't believe we were selling all of the things in the house.  I still can't, it brings tears just writing those words.  As stated before, my fondest childhood memories are looking in boxes and closets and drawers at the house discovering something old and beautiful and lovely.  It feels incredibly tough to think that I will no longer be able to do that.   And to top it off,  the idea that strangers would be pawing through those things, our family treasure, made my heart sink and twist and the tears would come. 
Then the photos starting going up on the site and our family began to be described in a way that felt unreal and unfamiliar.  Then there was the news coverage that felt violating and surreal.
Then I heard that the Denver Police Department was very excited about my great-great grandfather, Robert Yardley Force. They sent a historian to the house and he spent 4 hours at the house, looking at all the stuff we had on Robert Yardley.   Apparently, he found a canceled check written by Robert for transporting a prisoner, and he was incredibly excited by this find.  Its one small slip of paper in the thousands of slips of paper we have about our family and he will treasure that far more then we will.  It made me excited that someone else will treasure some of our things and possibly find more meaning in them then we had found.  I didn't even know my great great grandfather was a sheriff until a few months ago. And that cancelled check was just one piece of paper in a house full of such memories.  The police department also sent out an officer to be at the house during the sale, in honor of Robert Yardley.  I found that touching. This story helped me let go a little and hope that others would find equal excitement.
But seeing the news coverage of the actual sale was incredibly tough, the masses of people, the lines, the men just shoving things in their boxes, the ladies in line saying they were interested in the pottery.  Do they know that pottery was from my grandma's grandfather?  He came from Cornwall and was ordained as a minister at a very young age.  He was an itinerant preacher and picked up all that pottery in his travels.  I visited his family home in Cornwall with my grandma, and she always spoke so fondly of him.  That pottery has story and meaning and is full of our family history.  Those ladies didn't have a clue. Its heartbreaking to think that it is now gone.