My Ashes of Dead Lovers Garage Sale and Other Adventures of a Single Woman of a Certain Age by Marilyn Celeste Morris. A bit about My Ashes of Dead Lovers Garage Sale from Marilyn... The original column that this book takes its name from has been lost somewhere in the depths of my office. It's probably just as well, but the gist of the column was: My single blonde friend and I combined our households for a garage sale. While sorting through items, she would hold something up and ask something like: Where did you get this? Fortunately, she didn't add the word 'monstrosity'. And my reply was usually something like: 'Oh, you remember old what's his name. He gave it to me when he got a guilty conscience for taking somebody else to ski in Aspen. Let's put a $.25 cent tag on it.' And then, another object, with a similar answer.

In sum, I had about six or seven unwanted gifts in the pile, all marked $.25 cents. That's all the memories of these guys are worth, I pronounced over a glass of wine (not for sale, incidentally). Poor guys. If they only knew, their ashes were even now being spread over the garage, albeit in the form of their cheesy gifts to me...And that's where My Ashes of Dead Lovers Garage Sale got its name...