The signs for an estate sale beckoned, so I followed. It was an error in judgment.

Estate sales seem synonymous with great bargains and possible treasures. But unless it’s an attempt to falsely elevate a garage sale hosted by the living, a true estate sale is about disposing of property because of a death.

Although “estate” suggests a house with grounds and a sweeping drive, the sale last Saturday was in a single-family residence on a typical east-west Ballard street.

On any given weekend, particularly in good weather, there’s a frenzy associated with garage and yard sales, but none greater than that generated by the prospect of an estate sale.

I happened upon last week’s estate sale at a critical juncture: the exact hour at which the entire contents of the home dropped 50 percent off the marked price.

Along the block, neighbors were mowing and weeding except at the house where a line was snaking from the front door like strangers waiting for a Port-A-Potty at the Fremont Fair.

Whenever a few shoppers finally exited a man at the door would open the screen door to announce, “Two more.”

Those leaving waved their finds at the line like triumphant looters. They made multiple trips bearing plants and planters, trunks and boxes of dishes.

Then it was my turn, right behind the woman who showed me online descriptions of all the weekend’s estate sales on her iPhone.

To say there were clues about the lives lived in the house for the previous 60 years of its eight decades is inaccurate. It was as if their whole lives were laid out and priced with stickers in an obnoxious shade of orange. All that was missing was the man or woman who should have been opening the front door instead of the professional estate sales representative.

The kitchen cabinets and drawers were spilled open, every object marked – from the pan still sitting on a burner to potholders on hooks.

The childhood bedrooms were almost intact, the artwork attesting to a mix of Catholic upbringing and evolving musical tastes. One child had obviously been artistic; charcoals and drawing pencils were still on the shelves.

Everything was marked in place, from hand towels to shampoo and conditioner by the sink, the Christmas decorations in the crowded basement and the firewood in the connecting garage, sheet music and record albums throughout the house.

This was not a home that had been updated or sorted; it could be labeled “typical home circa 1970.”

There was nothing inside the house for me other than a sense of sadness that lives could be priced so cheaply and discounted so quickly.

It was less like an organized sale than a turning out of their closets, but with sales tax charged at the door.

The sale was over by Saturday afternoon. By Wednesday, the family had been stripped from the house. There wasn’t a single can of paint, no more dishes or furniture. The fishing gear was out of the basement, the plants were gone. All that remained were the fixtures and the drapes.

The house was already on the market and with photographs of an empty house.

The family’s name wasn’t a secret during the estate sale. It was on the mailbox, diplomas on the wall, newspaper clippings.

The family raised three children in Ballard. One daughter lived with her mother in later years and died at age 65, two years before her mother’s recent death at age 94.

The other siblings live in California; their homes are probably already too full of their own books and dishes. They didn’t need their mother’s Christmas decorations or the measuring cups.

So in the end, after the mother’s death, it was an estate company that opened the doors to strangers seeking deals.

Despite some over-exuberance, the shoppers probably meant well and will treasure their additions to Elvis paraphernalia and Hummel collections.

But, I didn’t have any reason to be in that house. I felt like I had trodden on newly dug graves.

The time to have crossed the threshold would have been when Etta Gerhardine Cox was the one to invite me across as she must have opened the door for so many during most of her lifetime in that little house.