JUST ANOTHER DAY - IN “OUR TOWN”

Got the news, early on election day that a person I’ve known in the retail business for many years, had passed away on the weekend. I felt bad for the store clerk that morning, who was trying to tell me about her friend’s passing, the day before, tears welling up in her eyes......but a keen sense of decorum, trying to carry-on with business because, after all, it’s a job.....and there’s not a lot of room for emotion while tending a busy main street sale-counter with customers lining up and impatient. They’ve got no time to waste, you see. Time waits for no one. There are places to go and profits to make. Of course, how would they know. They weren’t just then, affected by the sense of tragedy and loss. Yet it just seemed, at that precise moment, that everyone should just stop for a moment.....to respect the person who occupied this same sales desk for more than a decade. It should have been alright in the almighty scheme of things, for the day to day business to just calm for a few minutes of kind reflection. Maybe the shop should have been closed altogether, so the folks here could mourn properly, and not have to trudge on with this over-burden of already burdened life. I left the shop feeling as I do in these circumstances that it just isn’t fair on any count,.....and as naive as I tend to be, it’s that mirror image of “Our Town,” where joy and prosperity, tragedy and sorrow, birth and death raise us in spirit one moment, and dash us into tears the next. This wasn’t a play. It wasn’t a Hollywood script. It was real. It was final.

An election has occurred. Candidates who won last evening’s vote are ecstatic, the losers wonder what went wrong. The pundits are stirring their coffees with varying clatter, and political hangers-on are anxious about having nothing more to do, no more rallies to attend, signs to erect, doors to rap upon. Present councillors will wonder how the world will turn without them, and the newly elected can’t wait to sit at the council chamber in the great hall, in the new town office. They will ponder being able to fulfill their election promises, and make mental notes about their first council pitches, and then meeting the press for their post election interview.

I don’t imagine many of those folks who do now, and who will shortly lead our municipal government, will give too much consideration to the former store manager who succumbed to illness. Afterall, it’s just part of this cycle of life and times.....that fills our hours with pleasure and success at the same time as it purges others of any kind of happiness or contentment. While some enjoy prosperity others suffer from poverty and constant need. As an historian, who has so aggressively pursued the work of William Henry Smith, who wrote the book “Gravenhurst,” the title from which we were named, I understand the philosopher’s argument, that in order to fully appreciate happiness, we must also endure the intrusion of sadness, or there is no means of comparison of emotion. Each time the intrusion hurts as much as it did the time before and the time before that!

I was reminded on this day of my own philosophy about “home town.” There were folks who reacted in kind immediately, and many others who have since offered assistance at this sad time. Looking out upon the town, it was bustling at the noon-hour. Mothers pushing strollers, teenagers hanging in groups swapping tall tales, businessmen in suits on a quest, heavy trucks, like tanks, moving south on the main street, toward the construction site disrupting the business community. Candidates were hustling about to yank down their election signs, some big, some bigger. They had no time. No time. An ever-turning world, you see!

There was however, this gentle, insisted-upon pause. Stolen moments from a busy world, to remember the person who used to meet me here every day.....once, and who was very much a part of the character, the soul of Our Town. When she first began working at the shop, she used to give my boys her own music memorabilia, because she knew they didn’t have a lot of spending money....and they’d appreciate the collectibles that she’d held onto herself for years. It meant a lot to her, to see them pleased by the act of kindness, and it impressed upon them, what kindness means in perpetuity to us all. I often chatted with her for one reason or another, and it was that strange commonplace you see, I very much adore, when everyone is in the place they should be. I have always feared.....loathed change. But as sadness is consumed by the rigors of daily life, and tears dry away eventually, and the pause ends as all pauses do, we will still miss those days of once....and that’s okay!

As I have held as mantra for so many years, it’s the difference between a town, a place to reside, and one that can truly be called a “home town.” It’s what I felt at the counter, with those co-workers, on that particular day that made all the difference to me, because it was a signature of a caring place and caring people....and they held special, a memory of someone they knew as both a colleague and a friend.

It’s what I hope our new council will embrace most of all, when they set out their definition of Gravenhurst for the future.....that they see the humbleness of home above all else, and the humanity that dwells within.....and they appreciate, when bandying about words like “progress” and “moving-forward,” that they come to the appreciation there is so much more to quality of life than business as usual!

Rest in peace Alice. Thank you for kindnesses bestowed over many years.

As time makes memories of us all, this pause ended, I said goodbye to my friend who had told me the news, and I ventured forth, my purchase under my arm, as is my habit after these visits to my favorite shop in Gravenhurst. Today the din of a small town seems too intrusive and disrespectful. There is almost disharmony but sadness won’t muffle the traffic, or stop the sun from breaking through the clouds, or the squirrels from chattering from barren boughs.

It’s just another day isn’t it. I’m just glad I’m home!