A couple down the street from us (at the suburban “blah”) house, seemed to be having a yard sale. An amazingly disorganized yard sale, but there it was. Since I was walking Shorty the Corgi I decided to take a stroll through. I’m always on the lookout for a bargain on tools or whatnot.
I left completely and utterly depressed.
The couple was not there, you see. Their (barely) adult children were, and they were “closing up” the house.
The couple had called it quits…divorcing…their relationship flying apart so fast and so spectacularly that a judge had permitted them to grab personal items, and then banned them both from the residence. Each had taken his/her prized possessions and fled to their respective corners of the country. The house was a rental, and the judge terminated the lease effective the end of this month (just a few days away).
The kids were removing a lifetime of memories and possessions from the house, loading a few more valuable items on a truck, and the remaining was put out for strangers to rifle through and look for anything interesting. Desperate to get it all done in the limited time, they were frantically sorting things into piles. Trash. Charity. “Maybe somebody wants.”
“There’s no prices. Take anything. Pay what you want. It’s all gotta go. That pile over there is free.”
From the liquor in the cabinets to the food in the pantry…socks, lingerie, the CD and movie collections…things the couple would have taken…not *super* valuable stuff, but certianly useful stuff. Things they would need. Things that had memories. Any couple moving would have taken these things…had they not broken down into a seething pool of hate. These things were tainted now…for them.
You could see the life…the memories…the work and effort…scattered randomly about the lawn.
Even the wedding pictures…this was more akin to an estate sale than anything else.
I left empty handed and disturbed.
How could love break so far down? How could it get to that point without communicating that there was a problem? How could it progress this far without a more peaceful…or productive resolution? Even if a split was inevitable…how could the culmination happen so suddenly?
Nobody won here. Everybody lost. The carnage of that loss was spread out for all to see.
How?
I’ve no clue…and hope I never have to find out. The world’s too big to take on alone.
If you’ve got someone…hold ’em tight.
If you’ve got a problem…talk about it.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
