The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.

Time Won't Wait

By Dessa Rodeffer
Quill Editor/Publisher

9 August 2000

Many times I heard my mother say, "Time Won't Wait," and her words never rang more true than at the fast pace of the auction sale of my mother's household items last week.

Growing up, you never think about your parents household coming to a close where everything will have to be passed on, sold or given-away some day, but it happens, oh, so fast.

From the moment you find your job is cleaning out the family household, everything becomes valuable because each holds a treasured memory.

Whether it is a knife your grandmother always peeled apples with, fine china which dressed the table on the holidays, to your dad's favorite cup you often saw him drink coffee from, they all are family treasures.

Even the worn out tablespoons of my mother's that had been handed down by her mother, had a story to tell. It was a story of hardship during the depression years and how everything was used, and used, and used, before ever considering a new purchase.

Quilt tops made out of scraps of leftover material from dresses, even had a new meaning to me.

And the many crocheted items, including trim on baby dresses and doilies, were seen as a beautiful attempt by a woman to care for her family in the best way she knew how.

As the sale quickly moved and items were sold before one could think, I bid on a pink dish that was my grandmother's, feeling it was too precious to let go.

My mother said Grandma had given a dime for it, but the auctioneer said I had just purchased it for $43.

Mother looked at me as if I had lost my mind paying that kind of price, but I felt it was worth every cent.

Watching the bedroom furniture sell, numerous photos, bedding, and a hundred items which it takes to make a home, left me with an empty pit in my stomach that I have become familiar with in the sorting and decision making of late.

After returning home from the four-hour sale that seemed like minutes, time stood still for the first time.

Visions of the end of a home that was once happy and beautiful, played over and over again in my mind throughout the next few days and nights.

I looked at my mother and she questioned me. "What's that look about?

"I'm just glad I still have you, mom," I answered. "That's all."