Last Saturday, I stood in a line for an estate sale. My curious mind wondered about the owner of the house, a recently deceased man who had lived there for 43 years, the last few without his wife and daughter.

My mind wanted to solve the mysteries of the house. Its exterior looked tired from neglect, in need of a power washing to restore its original appearance. The home was situated inside a circumference of beautiful, mature trees, high enough to touch the clouds but close enough to embrace the building within their leafy limbs just like a mother would hold her baby in her arms.

I first stepped into the garage. Typical stuff like old garden tools were fixed against the walls. There were three Schwinn bicycles, the country’s most popular producer of multiple speed two-wheelers that went bankrupt in 2001. The bikes’ banana seats were thread worn, perhaps from the countless times a father, mother and daughter had pedaled through the pastoral countryside highlighted by an oval shaped 40-acre lake that sits in the center of the community.

After a few steps inside, I immediately imagined his presence, an old man who had waved his white flag, losing the war to the demanding upkeep of his once vibrant domain. Floor to ceiling windows that had invited the outdoors into the indoors were stained with a mossy grime. Every room in the house, once filled with bristling life, had been left in a dark despair.

Scuttling in front and around me, estate shoppers scooped up artifacts of the man’s life, his copper bowls, wicker baskets, winter jackets. I sorted through a huge pile of CDs that took me on a time machine ride back to the mid 20th century. I could imagine this family entertaining guests by the double-sided stone fireplace enhanced by his music collection of James Brown, Simon and Garfunkel, and the British Invasion that rocked America in the mid-1960s.

There was plenty of material evidence that suggested the homeowner might have had a career as an electrician. Light fixtures, wiring and flood lamps were strewn about shelves and countertops. I pictured the home in the prime of its glory, ablaze within a circle of soft light that lit the surrounding forest and illuminated the long road that led to the driveway.

This was indeed a party house back in its day. I envisioned Saturday night guests entering the front door to the sounds of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” spinning through the CD player.

A movie scene rolled through my mind. His wife escorts their guests into the living room, to the warm crackling flames of the fire. They exchange childhood stories that float up to the ceiling inside bubbles of laughter. The man’s wife, adorned in an elegant evening dress, delivers a tray of appetizers. He boasts to his guests that this college coed he dated so long ago is still the most beautiful woman in the world 26 years later.

All eyes look to the windows that welcome a magnificent starlit sky. A round of drinks has the couples dancing carefree and singing off key to “Sweet Caroline.” The party ends just past midnight and with their friends departed, the man and his wife cuddle on the couch until the last embers of the waning fire burn out.

My trip down Fantasy Lane is disturbed by the crash of a bowl dropped by a shopper. A scene from the play, “Death of a Salesman” pops into my mind. Willy tells his wife, Linda, that he hopes his son takes over the house after they die.

“No, life is a casting off,” Linda says. She explains that life has a finish. A house is only a box that holds a family’s joys and sorrows until inevitable death and departure empty the box before another family moves in.

And yet, the walls of the box are painted in permanent memories, a canvas brushed by a child’s tears, a mother’s laughter and moments of unconditional love given to them by the king of his castle.

I opened a bedroom closet. On the floor was a pair of the man’s shoes, coated in earthly dust as if just yesterday he had worn them for the last time. I take on his persona. I’m standing in his shoes, taking my final walk through the rooms, praying the Grim Reaper lets me have this moment before he knocks on my door.

This house, once filled with so much life, now is laden with loneliness ever since my wife died and my daughter moved to California. The pervading silence is broken by the voices I hear coming from inside the walls.

“It’s been a great ride,” says the fireplace wall. “We shared so many lessons of life in front of these fortunes of flames.”

I step into the kitchen. I can almost taste the food. “The delicious Christmas lasagnas, the Thanksgiving turkeys, the Easter hams were cooked in recipes of love,” says the wall above the oven.

Next, I peek into my daughter’s bedroom. “Remember this?” says the wall behind her bed. A scene opens before my eyes. I’m sitting on the edge of her bed, reading her a story about a frog and a prince. She falls asleep before I get to read the last page.

I return to my senses. I exit the estate sale with nothing in my hands and everything in my mind. Reality is what it is for this house. A family of three was reduced to one before it is now empty with none.

We all face the end of mortality, but our houses live on in eternity. Revolving doors move one family out and move another family in, excited to make their own lifetime memories inside the box and leave their stories stacked inside the library of its walls.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com