…that we must use in out defense: Silence
I went to an estate sale yesterday. People can have all of the garage sales they want in their lifetime, but they only get one estate sale, and someone else gets to oversee that. Think of them as the garage sales that nobody wants to have.
It’s strange walking through a fully furnished house full of things that are all available. I walked through such a sale, knowing there was nothing there I could buy. I had no cash in my wallet, and a skating coach was busy helping my daughter practice her moves. This was relieving me of any estate sale funds, but those are the tradeoffs that have to be made. I’m not complaining about it, either.
So I walked through the house, looked at a rather tasty vinyl collection, and thought to myself that this person couldn’t be much older than I am. My birthday’s coming up soon, and I would spot the recently deceased ten years on me, at the most. In the absence of any knowledge of who the deceased actually was, that’s a fair assumption, I think.
It was a nice house, and a company had been hired to come in and set prices for everything. It must be an interesting process, I’m sure. They take everything that a person owned at the time of their death and liquidate it, while being sensitive to the survivors and relatives of the deceased person. It’s like picking through the carcass of a person’s life, or at least facilitating the picking for other people like me.
I made it out to the garage, where I was looking through a box of books as some music was playing. And the GoGos’ Our Lips Are Sealed came on. I’ve heard the song dozens of times over the years, but for some reason one of the lines only came clear to me in that spot. It’s the first line of the second verse, and I put it in the title and first line of this post. And if you came here looking for actual weapons discussion, my apologies to you.
I smiled when I heard it, because heretofore it had been a string of gibberish ending in “Silence,” at least in my mind. It now made sense to me, and I realized that, when I walked out of the sale–empty-handed, of course–at least the process hadn’t been for nothing.
My condolences go out to the family of the deceased, of course, but life does go on, and the Go Go’s and this song from decades ago shall always remind me of this fact.
