Our Black Firday

A fair amount of Mom's stuff will be auctioned off tonight. The very lovely people who helped us to clear the house sent me a link to the auction site. Seeing her stuff lined up brought tears to my eyes.
There's nothing particularly valuable. There's a dining set that she loved. Her "good" dishes and glassware that she hasn't used in years. A bedroom set that she bought when I was a kid and she and I were sharing a bedroom at Grandma's house. Other random pieces of furniture and some paintings. It's her stuff. It was the stuff I saw at her house. All of her houses. It doesn't matter that downsizing was the right thing to do. It feels creepy and sad to see it marked for sale. I didn't expect to see this until Mom had passed and in some ways it feels like a part of the inevitable moment of her leaving. I can't show her the site. She is struggling to process the loss as it is and for her it is loss.
The movers will be packing up her remaining belongings (and there are many) some of which will go to her new apartment, some of which will go into storage until we can process it and some of it is family heirloom stuff that will come to me. It's funny to use the word heirloom in reference to our family stuff. None of it is valuable, except in terms of sentiment.
Mom and I have very different styles. Her stuff was nice but it wasn't anything I would have chosen.I never wanted it. I am getting the things I wanted and she still has plenty of stuff. So the tears in my eyes aren't really about stuff. Or loss of stuff. It's about knowing that she is sad about the changes in her life and knowing I can't do anything about that. And knowing I will never again visit her and see that particular stuff. It's about change and endings. And beginnings. And uncertainty.
Other than a few odds and ends I have everything I'll ever really want. Obviously I'm going to want more books. My electronics will become obsolete. Some of them already are. But I am not drawn to shop. Neither is she. My stuff is less valuable than her's in monetary terms. But I have little plastic animals from cocktails that make me smile. Matchbooks and sand dollars. Dishes and dolls. I look around and see my life in my stuff. And that was true for her.
Oak Street is still full of shoppers. Oak Street is all small business so I'm not hating it. Mom is entertained by the constant parade of people.
Consumerism is a plague but we buy stuff. We collect stuff. Our stuff has meaning. I imagine the auction is almost over and someone is happy that they got a great price on dining room set.