We
have been getting ready for a farm sale for close to a year. The work, worry, and
trips to Kansas have ratcheted up as the months went by. Each trip was reliving
years of experiences and saying goodbye to a life as it used to be. The house
has stood without residents for two years while the in-laws accepted assisted
living. They finally said they could not go back. I will spare you the stories
of no water to clean with, rodents invading the house, rotting wood on the deck
dropping me like a hangman’s trap door, the snakes slithering about, the
tornado watch as the final cleaning was done, and the disappearing asparagus patch!
Once
the sorting and boxing and cleaning were done, the auction itself was easier.
There was a melancholy underneath the day sure, but there was laughter as well
as tears. The leaning port a potty? Or maybe some ugly item that no family
member appreciated but sold for a surprising price. Neighbors appeared just to
show support; men who had farmed the land with my father-in-law or who might
have borrowed a rake or cultivator some hot summer day. Women who knew of my mother-in-law’s
paintings, wanting one more, realizing there would be no more Dorothy art for
their own farmhouse walls.