The Final Signs Of The Death Of The Store

My plan to go home immediately after the U. and clean out the fridge instead of my original plan of helping out at The Store was flipped on its head in one phone call: Father, who, luckily, called me in the early morning when I was actually awake, told me he forgot his cell at home and, if I was up and about, to bring it to him. That meant, at best, I had to do both The Store and The Fridge today.

While standing there, tabulating my expenses for December 2011 and reading a year-old City Pages, I look up and to the right. Against the other side of the front side of The Store, right next to the front door, are some shelves. They used to -- used to -- hold stuff. But the top one ... well, I don't quite recall, but it seemed a lot emptier than the last time I noticed it. And I shuddered.

All thoughts that I was thinking things that actually weren't there was dispelled when Father came up to the front with a ladder. He needed my help bringing things down from the tops of the walls. There were decorative ... um, paintings for lack of a better word all around The Store. I know they haven't been there the whole time, but I barely remember a time when they weren't there. In other words, these decorations have been up for a long time. And Father took the occasion of having his second-born son around to finally bring them down.

When it was over -- it took about a half-hour and he wasn't done before he decided to stop -- I looked up at the walls. They were up there for a long time, and we certainly didn't wash the walls. So seeing these bright, clean rectangles outlined by years of dirt and incense smoke is another stark sign.

Later, a couple came in, a mother and daughter. The mother recognized me from way back; "I remember you when you were this little!" she said, pushing her hand down, palm down, indicating the size I was the last time we met. I did not recall her at all.

Father helped her get medications from the cabinet, which is right next to the front door. That's when he said something really chilly. This mother wanted to grab a lot of medicine, but he tried to limit what she wanted to buy. Well, turns out it was what she wanted to take: "Be careful -- this isn't ours to sell anymore."

Sell? Anymore? What do you mean? The Store is ours. Then I thought that I had to deal with impending sale and closing of The Store. Now you're telling me that it's already happened? Are we now mere caretakers of The Store? We're interlopers in our own business?? I'm a stranger in a place that I've known all my life???

The daughter later clued me in because I had this puzzled look on my face: Father apparently told her mom to come on down and take what she wanted, even though now he's backpedaled and is all "wait-wait-wait!" to the mother now. From what I gather -- assuming it's true -- he has already inventoried all the things in The Store for, I guess, the new owner, and anything that isn't there by the time the new owner moves in has to be accounted for.

I am as indignant about what I guess is happening as I am sad. I guess it's business, and I have resigned myself long ago to the fact that I'm taking this much harder than my parents are (and that they don't care about this, about The Store or anything else, for that matter), but a lot of shit just caved in on me on my stay at The Store today. I saw both a physical sign and overheard a financial transaction proving, with increasing surety and proximity to my world, that The Store is no more.

What has been a rock in my life, in my family's life, is going away soon. And I still can't get over it. I'm sorry, but I can't.

And the worst part about this is that I need to go back to it, to this scene of profound sadness for me, tomorrow. For The Store. And because I don't know how much time I have left with it.