Good Karma

What goes around comes around

One of the things that helped me as I parted company with many of my most significant possessions was the satisfaction that came from knowing that they were going to good people, and good homes.

Wasn’t it risky to advertise on Craig’s List and let perfect strangers into my home while I was alone, as many have asked? Maybe. Maybe I was naïve, or too trusting. But I like to think it was good Karma to make the effort of giving my belongings a new and happy life, just as I was hoping to do for myself.

A few of my favorite encounters:

- Clearly the most wrenching decision was to let go of my piano, so laden with symbolism (a gift from my parents) and emotion (the musical love of my life). And despite several inquiries from prospective buyers, it went almost immediately to a British gentleman who instantly fell in love with the instrument. He could not stop admiring it and, after a brief discussion on price, insisted on coming over again the next day with two copies of a very proper purchase agreement to sign, and a $100 deposit! Three days later when his piano movers came, he mentioned that his daughter founded and runs a major nonprofit musical foundation (Music Unites), and so I knew even more profoundly that my piano was going to the right place.

- When I was clearing out my parents’ apartment after my father died, I sold their beautiful teak dining room breakfront to a lovely young couple of women. They were sweet and sensitive, and incredibly strong, packing the heavy piece, as well as the full bedroom set, by themselves onto their pickup truck. Now it was time for the matching teak table and chairs to go, but I was having trouble getting buyers. Finally a woman responded to my umpteenth ad and said she could come the next day to pick up the set – sight unseen except for the photo. And who pulls up to my driveway at the appointed hour? The same couple who had bought the breakfront a year and a half earlier. Not only was I so pleased to sell it to them, in particular, but also now the dining set would be reunited. And, a further coincidence: one of the women was from Nova Scotia originally, and upon seeing Scout cried, “A Duck Toller!” (My friends will know that, while Scout is probably just a mutt, she does in fact most resemble a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever.) Who, but this buyer, would know such a thing?

- It was painful to sell my Ethan Allen bedroom furniture, which I loved and had bought only a few years ago. But one charming young woman was so keen on the desk (she never even negotiated the price!), that despite getting her car totaled in an accident on the way to pick it up, she came in a pickup with her brother and his friend that same day. My bedroom door and moldings had to be removed to fit the desk through, and the path down my twisting stairway threatened several times to permanently lodge the piece, but they pursued the job tirelessly until they strapped it on to their truck and drove away. That same evening, my daughter’s boyfriend helped me put back the door and moldings (more fun, he said, than repairing tanks in the Israeli army!). I spackled and painted the next morning, and the doorway was good as new.

There are many more stories I could tell, but what I couldn’t sell, I gave away: 

- books to the library that was collecting them for inmates at the local prison

- my crutches and father’s walker to the volunteer ambulance squad

- six comforters to Shelter our Sisters (for victims of domestic violence)

- housewares and books to the Disabled Veterans of America

- more books to the library at the Classic Residence assisted living facility where my parents last lived

- clothing and ‘giftable’ knick knacks to a local thrift shop

- a sofa, chair and tons of cookware to a single teen mom who just moved into an apartment without a single possession.

Someday my children (are you reading this?) will thank me for not leaving them with so much to get rid of after I’m gone, but it was also a necessary and cathartic exercise for me, here and now. Besides,

“One should perform karma …  without expecting the benefits because sooner or later one shall definitely get the fruits.”

- Rigveda (one of the four sacred texts of Hinduism)