I realized this weekend that we are all going to die. Not immediately, at least in most cases, but certainly at some point in the not-too-distant future, unless science makes some giant leaps in the next few decades or the singularity happens faster than predicted, we are going to die.

It’s not exactly an earth-shaking revelation. Most of us have the sneaking suspicion we are mortal (it becomes increasingly apparent as you slide out of your twenties), but it was driven home for me when Kathleen and I stopped at an estate sale.

We don’t go to many because we’ve got too much stuff as it is, but we’ve been to a few. Mostly, like this one, because they happen to be on the route of our walk up to Forest park.

Even though I don’t seek them out, I’ve been to enough to know, broadly speaking, what to expect: a gloom in the air, the smell of moth balls, wildly out of fashion clothes bordering on retro chic, a thousand pieces of costume jewelry, a kitchen full of mostly underused gadgets, maybe some art, some dog-eared books and usually a pair of binoculars. Oh, and of course, a horde of people pawing through things looking for a Faberge egg or some other lost treasure, and perhaps some cheap laundry detergent.

Estate sales are oddly unsettling because there are great deals to be hand because someone died. It’s different than a garage sale, when living, jovial people try to unload their junk. In an estate sale, the seller is all in, and all gone. Every single bit of their life is on full display. It’s a museum-quality display of how they spent their life. It makes for a grim atmosphere because strangers are sifting through the remains of a life and, depending on whether they purchase something, unintentionally deciding the value of a life. Usually that value is in the one to five dollar range.

This estate sale was a little different and it made me think about what MY estate sale should be like.

There were all the expected items present — the carefully stored Christmas lights, scuffed luggage for one dollar a piece, the stamp collections and the smell of mothballs. But there was also an entire room devoted to a life of travel. Not souvenirs, not snow globes from Sweden or commemorative plates London, but actual art and masks and carvings from the four corners of the world (note: the earth was once flat and square). That right there, at least to me, was the sign of a life well spent and a good lesson: travel more.

I don’t want to die and have people at my estate sale thinking, “wow, he sure went to the grocery store every weekend.” Or worse, as a proud member of corporate America, “Look at those spreadsheets and reports. He sure knew his way around PowerPoint.”

Equally compelling at yesterday’s sale, whoever had shuffled off this mortal coil, along with being a seasoned traveler, either had a wicked sense of humor or was quirky and musically curious to the point of legend. They had an extensive music collection with hundreds of CDs of Marvin Gaye and Anne Murray and the like, but mixed in with the classics and soft rock crooners was a staggering array of rap CDs. And not just the familiar names, like the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J, but hard core stuff like Too Short (a LOT of Too Short), Wu Tang Clan and more. There were hundreds of them.

Similarly, upstairs next to the musty quilts and ancient TVs, there were two boxes of comic books spanning from the 70s to the 90s!

Extensive travel, musically curious and a reader of comic books? That was a life well lived!

I’m not sure what our estate sale will be like, but I hope it is a lot like the one we visited yesterday.

The curious browsers will likely find a LOT of books of the non-electronic variety (bringing up an interesting point: will we some day have digital estate sales?), some vintage comic books, jewelry that’s sentimentally precious but not so much mineralogically and some fairly nice art that no one will purchase (but collectors might low-ball bid on). Plus all the expected stuff — the mismatched silverware, chipped mugs and barely used tools in the garage.

They’ll know we did some traveling (and hopefully a lot more by the time we actually die), read a lot of pretty weird books and, speaking for just myself, had terrible fashion sense. I do think the estate sale groupies will have a hard time puzzling out one thing though: why, exactly, did the people in the house have so damn many copies of The Cowboy and the Vampire books?

It will be a mystery for the ages … or at least for a few minutes until they move on to the next estate sale.aracer.mobi