The loss column

One of the truisms of growing old is that the losses increase. 

At my age, the parental losses among my age peers have pretty much slowed to a trickle. These days, the lives my friends and family members mourn are those of our husbands and wives, our sisters and brothers, our cousins, our classmates, our colleagues, our friends. Sometimes - rarely, thankfully, but always unfathomable - it's the loss of a child or grandchild.

Sometimes the great losses are pets, but the great thing about losing a dog or a cat is that while those precious critters are actually, of course, irreplaceable in our hearts, they are in fact replaceable in a way that humans just are not.

The losses we experience are painful, but we all know that they're part of life, the admission fee we pay. Sure, we could avoid losses by avoiding relationships, but who wants a life devoid of what make life worth living?

Then there are the celebrity losses that have nothing to do with our "real lives," but which we mourn nonetheless. 

Although I watched plenty of Bob Barker hosted game shows as a kid, I felt nothing - other than a vague quiver of nostalgia - when I heard that he died at the age of 99. (Mostly, I laugh when I hear his name, as Bob Barker is a major supplier of items like soap to institutions like jail. And homeless shelters. I volunteer in one, where we hand a bar of Bob Barker soap to our guests when they sign up for a shower.)

When Tony Bennett died, I didn't start weeping, but I did order a couple of CDs of his that I didn't have. 

And I of course sang Margaritaville in the shower the morning I found out Jimmy Buffett had passed away. 

So the celebrities - the athletes, the actors, the singers, the writers, the pols - that have been around forever start passing into the great beyond. And while all those mounting demises don't tend to impact our day-to-day lives - when I have a few free moments, I don't think "gotta call Tony Bennett" the way when I had a few free moments for years after my mother died I'd think "gotta call Ma" - they are the occasion for mini-mourning.

So are the losses in the natural world. 

A few weeks ago, I read that the emperor penguin population is at risk. And horseshoe crabs. Horseshoe crabs have been

around for half a billion years, give or take. Now they're facing extinction. 

And we'll no doubt be hearing about a lot more losses in the natural world. 

The inanimate losses rack up, too. 

Many of the stores of my childhood are long gone. 

Denholm's was Worcester's primo department store. It's been gone for decades, but I still have (and use) a lovely covered casserole dish my mother bought for me at Denholm's nearly 50 years ago. And I miss the idea of Denholm's.

I actually miss the reality of Filene's, especially the Basement. And Jordan Marsh. 

The body's barely cold, but already I miss Bed Bath & Beyond, where there was always something I wanted and/or needed. And the Christmas Tree Shoppe? No trip to the Cape was complete without a stop at the thatch-covered mega Christmas Tree Shoppe at the Sagamore Bridge. 

And what was that old-school (and not all that good) restaurant just outside their parking lot? I miss a stop there, too.

There are too many restaurants of yore to mourn and, fortunately, most of my local regulars are still around. But others are long gone. 

I miss Lala Rokh, and the little Dutch place on Charles that's been gone since the 1980 or so. I miss Gallagher's. And although I didn't much like the English Tea Room, I do sort of miss having it around. Or maybe I just miss being in my 20's, which was when the Tea Room, with it's ghastly sopping salad with the honey infused oil they passed off as dressing. 

Do I miss Durgin-Park, which closed a few years ago? Although I worked there 50 years ago (gulp!), I never ate there. It was awful. And yet when they closed a few years back, I did a bit of mourning. (No, I didn't wear black, but I did go to their going-out-of-business sale, and if the hand-painted wood signs for Indian pudding and strawberry shortcakes had cost less than $500, I might have gotten one of them.)

There are plenty of very good restaurants in Worcester when I make an occasional visit there, but, you know what? I miss the Webster House, and would love to stick a fork into one of their chicken pot pies, one of their lemon squares. 

And why am I so bummed out by the news that Brandeis University is eliminating its PhD program in music?

Do I know anyone in the program? No. Do I know anyone who was ever in the program? No.

My late friend Nanni had two children who got their PhDs in music, but neither of them went to Brandeis.

So why did I feel so awful when I read about Brandeis? Does it serve as a proxy for all the liberal arts programs that are being gutted, which is just a dreadful trend. 

I have no illusions that everything in the past was joy and roses, and I'm not one to traffic in nostalgie de la boue. (At least I hope not.) 

But the reality is that, as you grow old, the losses do start to mount, and it's not just the big ones, but the little ones.

So many entries in the loss column...

What are you going to do? Life and all the stuff related to life belongs to the living.

C'est la vie.