It was advertised as a moving sale, and I guess, in the most straightforward of ways, it was. I believe she moved to a higher plane, though, and that it happened in the first room on your right as you enter the home. She lived in a third floor walk-up in an older part of town, where the apartments are classic and sturdy, dignified, with elegantly curved facades that create rounded walls in many living rooms in Chicago. It’s a curious architectural decision, this idea to bend a coat of brick and mortar to form walls that envelope you in cozy alcoves. I’ve always thought it was a considerate choice.

I entered not long after the sale began, but many advertised things were already gone, and the woman’s personal effects were strewn about in absurd combinations. Glazed pottery lamps lay down weak circles of light on faded linoleum, their supporting tables purchased. Ashtrays were stacked on books and piles of firewood, left over from last winter, or stockpiled for next, occupied one corner. Several antique bottles of rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, half-filled, covered a desktop, along with a chocolate-colored typewriter and a box of pens and paperclips.

Nine black and white photos in cheap plastic frames lined the narrow hall, though a square of unfaded wallpaper suggested there had been a tenth. They were strange choices for wall hanging—fuzzy group shots at picnics with no one looking at the camera, a shot of two couples in a bar that looked like an ancient whisky ad, a woman standing alone in front of a rose bush. They were all of adult life—no family shots, but images of aging couples reading, drinking, smiling absently. There was only one of children: two boys. Did she hang the adult photos after the children left? Or did she keep them up always, as a reminder that she was more than a mother, but also a wife, friend, woman, and even, as one image confessed, a rollerskater?

In the kitchen, cupboards and cabinets poured dishes and cutlery onto the floor, table and countertops. She had so much silver…sets of serving trays, tureens, spoons, forks, knives, salt and pepper shakers. A Grey Poupon souvenir platter, dozens of polished corn cob holders with matching trays and delicate china service for 8. The shelves also held nearly twenty pint-sized green glass tumblers. They were solid and beautifully made, with deep sides and heavy bottoms. You could order a similar set these days from a high-end kitchen store. These, however, were originals, easily thirty years old. I knew instantly that these were the glasses that her friends and family still associate with her, in the same way that I can’t picture my father at the dinner table without the Kerr glasses we used in our home.

How many times did her son see her with a squat green glass, holding seasons full of lemonade, iced tea, water or beer? How many times did the clink of ice against that glass let her husband know she was awake next to him, wetting her lips in the soft dark of a summer night? As she grew older, alone, maybe she sat there in her kitchen every morning, turning the glass, letting the sun fill it, enjoying the column of green light that would dance between her hands and onto the pearly gray formica tabletop. This day, they are marked $3 for the set.

There in her kitchen, picking over a dead woman’s things, was I a harvester, a voyeur? I don’t think so. Walking through her home, I championed her good taste and fondly admired the things she found useful, important. This passing on of lives, and belongings, and spaces, just seems right. We spend our time making room in the world for ourselves, purchasing and filling our spaces with objects that make us happy. We amass shiny things, soft things, things that smell good. But at any random moment, we may be let go, or gathered up, however you like to think of it. And then our things fall away, into someone else’s hands, someone who sees the same value in that object. In fact, someone a little bit like you. That’s comforting, in its own way.

I left her home for the first and last time without the green glasses, or silver, or peroxide. I did leave one more square of unfaded wallpaper on that hallway, though. I guess I didn’t need more things—just one thing—something to remind me that every moment is heavy with potential; each may become the one you treasure when you recall the life you’ve lived. Even fuzzy group-shot picnic moments have that potential, if you really think about it.

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