Something regarding The Store really bothered me last night, primarily because I don't quite know what Father said.
While preparing dinner, my parents told me to change the mailing address of all correspondence regarding my (now late and possibly expired) health insurance. And then, Father thought my hesitation in reacting to their statement (which I always do -- I'm just a little slow after work) by explaining why I need to change the address.
But I didn't quite make out what he said. What I could hear is "It's closed." Or is it "We're closed?" Or is it "We are closing?" I heard something about "close" with an uncertain tense, that's what I heard. Now, they've said this many times since August 2011, but I'm afraid that when he said "closed" this time, My Father meant, well, "permanently." As in, "We're no longer even going to The Store." I mean, if they are telling me to change addresses after all this time of sending it to The Store, that must mean something else is changing ... that, or Mother told Father that I'm sending it in late because the letter came while on vacation, and they are telling me to do this so that won't happen again.
If The Store is closed up permanently, then the last time I walked through its musty, gigantic rooms was last Friday, when I was helping my parents dump some stuff in the dumpster. I did something I had never done: I walked through the entire upper floor, which used to store a lot of goods that we sold. With much of the place empty, and seeing some of the very old signs that my folks pushed to the walls and back of the closets and storage spaces, it looks like that some time ago, The Store was a social hall, with coat rooms, pay phones and everything. In fact, I actually went down a wide set of stairs I had never knew was there. It led all the way down to the ground floor; it led out to what was always a boarded-up set of doors right next to The Store's front door. Exploring all of this made me feel like a kid again, and that it might have been the very last time I would walk through her made it all the more precious and sentimental.
Finally, I walked through the front retail side and sat for 15 minutes. Then I made sure nothing was hinky (new holes where people tried to break in, for example), lit some incense, washed my hands (and least there's still running water -- well, at least there was as of last Friday), and left to go across the street and eat at the new wings place right next to the spot that used to be a science-fiction book store which had a video arcade for which my brother and I used to beg Mother to leave The Store to play on. Times change.
I really won't know if The Store is, you know, dead-dead-dead-dead until tomorrow. If I wake up to the sound of my parents tooling around in the kitchen or the garage, and they wake me up and nag at me to do something, then The Store is gone for good. And then I'll have to think about moving, because I don't know if I'll be able to put up with that shit.
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