In My Life in anticlimatic

A working list of the people and places therein that are dead and gone.

Holy Childhood School. Large 3 story brick schoolhouse from the turn of the century. Razed to the ground. I remember attending church dinners at the parish hall adjacent when I was a kid. Buffet and dancing. My grandparents 50th wedding anniversary, much the same. I remember climbing the stone stairs to preschool, and descending the stone stairs to the thriftshop in the basement that my great grandmother ran. Christmas concerts on the old wooden stage. Tours with my grandfather of the mechanical rooms.

Alans Northside. Razed to the ground to make way for a new Dominos Pizza. Working class diner. Used to meet my grandpa there for breakfast when I was a young adult. It was one of those brick places built around a huge fireplace in the center with seating that elevated out around it. Reasonably priced. Damn good coffee.

My Grandpa. French Canadian plumbing supply rep and salesman. Warm jolly old soul, incredible listener, always commanded any room he was in with astounding people skills. Never stopped flirting with my grandma. Best hugs. Always available for advice and perspective.

The Shitbox Hotel out on the corner of 31 and 131. Burned down a couple years ago. Had gone through many different owners. Used to pay 5 bucks to slip into their old barely functioning hot tubs after long winter days of shoveling snow. Very seldom a crowd, it was my little slice of heaven in a cold yet overcrowded world.

Mumma. Which was his last name, but somehow suited him better than Eric. I remember watching The Terminator at his birthday party when I was in second grade. In high school and young adulthood he was the muscle in our nerd posse- a Cleric, through and through. I remember the Fighter from our party bumbling his way through a story about him at his funeral after he opened his wrists in the bath tub a few years back. He was always the butt of our jokes. I could have been a better friend to him.

My Godparents. That cigarette yellowed house with the tall wide staircase immediately into the front door, and little nick knack cubbies everywhere. The wife was my mom’s best friend. I think they got married around the same time. Suicide via shotgun. Left behind 4 year old twin girls and an older daughter who was my age. Lost track of them all afterwards. Clyde would show up drunk once in a while like the old days at my folks house making everyone uncomfortable. Eventually his visits dissipated. Heard he died a few years ago.

My Dad, and rather than an endless novel regarding what he meant to me, I’ll go with this brief sentence instead.

The Ramona Inn. The first haunted place I discovered on my own as a young boy that just learned how to ride a bicycle. Razed to make way for a housing development many many years ago. What an impression it made on my memory, though. Absolutely noteworthy.

Madge. Marge. Estelle. Helen. Just through the backyard, on the other side of the block, my grandma lived and ultimately died in the house she was born in. Small yellow one with a washing machine and clothes line. No dryer. All her friends lived nearby, either across the alley or next door. Marge had this 1977 baby blue Chevy Caprice sitting in her driveway that she never drove, and always let me in for oatmeal raisin cookies if I stopped by. They have all been replaced with weird young foreigners from California and New York and Detroit. In the winter my old neighborhood is nothing but dark blue shadows and blankets of snow, with only my mother left there to keep smoke rising out of at least one chimney and a bit of light in at least one window.

My Uncle Jeff, Dad’s brother. Slow suicide via alcohol after his twin brother died in a car accident when they were 17. Of all the people, I miss him the most. He was such a character and contradiction. Frightening and chaotic, yet full of gentle love; mirthful and hedonistic, but the kind of laugh that would frighten the devil. He survived multiple car wrecks despite his best efforts, and once shot himself in the hand in the bathroom. No scream, just quiet. We thought he did himself in. Sent someone to look, and they found him quietly running water straight through the gaping hole in his palm. It was a stroke after an untreated month of pneumonia that got him.

Bob, Mr H. Our favorite customer. I often felt like he was as shaken up about our Dad’s death as we were. Ex military, but much older. Korean war era, I think. Easy to see why they got on so well. We had just done some work for him the week before. He offered me a beer as we were finishing, which I accepted and shot the breeze with him a while. Bastard went in for heart surgery and never woke up. Cruel timing.

K-Mart. Who I assume needs no introduction or explanation. In my town it was the only retail option throughout the 80s and early 90s, now it’s in this weird sort of buisnesss purgatory- incidentally across the street from the aforementioned hotel that burned down- wherein almost everything that once was something is now nothing. It’s like the town expanded in the early 80s in a wave or pulse, adding a ring around the old downtown- a K-Mart, an 80s era Dominoes, a video arcade, pet store, etc- and then again in the late 90s- adding another ring around the outside of the first- a walmart, a home depot, etc. The town didn’t have enough shopping resources to sustain both rings, it seems, and the middle died off- leaving a downtown only functioning economically due to it’s “hip” city-esque niche and the type of people that will pay for that kind of thing, and the outer most ring of contemporary box stores. The shell of the old plaza remains, and even now I can still see it hustling and buslting with traffic and people- every store in the plaza radiant and modern and flourishing. My young ma leading us past the train and pony quarter-rides and through those big double doors to fresh spoils.

Darla, and the reason I started this list. Just found out she died tonight, after speaking with her just a couple weeks ago about how well she was responding to chemo and how she had planned on living many many more years. I regret not getting a proper goodbye in, there’s much I’d have told her. I should have taken the opportunity when I had it. She was a teacher at a school I was expelled from, and was one of the only adults at the time that had my back. After I entered adulthood we became friends, and would exchange advice often over dinner or drinks. Another one of those rare warm souls that operate as beacons of light for the rest of us. Another great listener. Another role model. We’re quickly running out of them…