This common human experience which we all face or have already faced is probably reflected in the following thumbnail sketches of various owners. One owner had lived in a small apartment filled with Scandinavian antiques which reflected her heritage. She was suffering, though, from the ravages of Alzheimer s disease and was living in a nursing home. The possessions left behind were cut, burned, broken, slashed and in disarray. The owner was past the point of knowing or caring that these damaged goods were highly desirable because of her once pedigreed eye.
Some owners are very unsentimental about the whole process.
A woman in her seventies was leaving her contemporary suburban house for a farmhouse in Maryland, replete with pigs living indoors and out, chickens, llamas - and a fourth husband. She was more than happy to see something sell as long as it met her price. The unsentimental ones tend to be people who are moving on to a happier place. A totally detached owner, interested only in maximizing his profit, was a contractor who had purchased the house and its contents from the estate of a local veterinarian. But the shadow of the deceased veterinarian hung over the sale and working for this man we never met was a pleasure.