Making old things new again
Attending an estate sale is an excellent means of practicing memento mori, the ancient discipline of contemplating one’s inevitable death. Whether you’re the family left behind, the estate sale company workers who plan and execute them, or the buyers who gravitate from sale to sale picking over the material possessions and detritus of a person’s life, there is no dodging the hard facts: someone is dead, and soon, you will be too.
A fresh wave of awareness of my own inescapable—and ever close—demise washed over me recently when S. and I attended the Joffrion family estate sale. The Reverend Emile Joffrion and his wife Martha had served their beloved church family at the parish of the Church of the Nativity (Episcopal) in Huntsville, Alabama for some 67 years.… Read the rest