Lighthouse Depot & Feeling Really Good!

In a Google search earlier this afternoon, I was stunned to learn that the Lighthouse Depot, of Wells, Maine, THE lighthouse superstore w/ an equally wonderful catalog, closed in 2012 after 22 years in operation - economics, they said ...

I wept.

In fact, my entire afternoon shifted radically ... I had wispy thoughts of loss - i.e. that the older I happen to get, the more people, places, even virtues, disappear ... trying to get a hold of myself (as the Brits say), I thought back to the first time I ever visited such a place, and what its closure was stirring up within me --

I was feeling really good!  I had my beloved father; I had a man I was about to marry that I loved and I believed in because - here comes the hindsight - I didn't know any better; I even liked the state of Maine (imagine that!)!!!  I was feeling really good! not because there was a cure for my incurable illness - no!  I was feeling really good because my world looked like it had a million possibilities opening up in front of it, from lobstah to lupines ... to a bright shiny future that I just knew would have things happening I couldn't even name at that moment!  And I really felt, in the deepest part of my soul, that I was visible - that I mattered, and, that what I did, that mattered, too.

Remembering such a rebirth time as that - and knowing as sure as I know the name on my drivers license, that I don't have that anymore -- well, that's enough to make a person mourn --

For the Lighthouse Depot & every past item of remembering.