At the sight of the familiar old door,  I realize how long it’s been. I’m afraid of what I'll find inside, after all these years. I catch sight of a cat through the window, and I am heartened.

I’m back in Worcester, not because it’s the city where Clare and I met, or because its where I’ve spent a large part of my working life. No, I just needed the drive.

I do some of my best thinking, alone in my car. The monotony of freeway driving and white noise hiss of road open for me vast fields of possibility.

I thought about my mother, more especially, my mother’s papers. How can a whole person be just completely gone, spirit separated from flesh in an instant, and yet their papers be so heavily left behind?

  I thought about writing. Mom wrote poetry and a book about Sarah Ripley. Now, I want to become a writer. Yes, I know, I know — I’m writing and you’re reading. I just want to do more.

I also thought about the fact that when I write, I can get, yes, my brothers and sisters, just a little bit preachy. I could let the point be more implicit.

With these thoughts in my mind, it is no wonder I ended up at a bookstore. Mom and I both loved them.

To explain about this particular store, well, when I came to Worcester for the first time, twenty-seven years ago, I found the town quaint, quiet, and a little bit scary. There was all this nineteenth century charm going to seed, vacant storefronts remaining vacant, and long-standing businesses struggling against the inevitable.

Yet the town had hidden gems, among them, bookstores. Lots of bookstores. Ben Franklin was the largest of three dealers in a row overlooking City Hall Plaza. Over time, it came to feel like home to me, with genial owner Don Reid, requisite cats, and, most importantly, the artfully mixed odors of paper and ink. 

I’m glad that the store is still here. But all around it, the decay of downtown Worcester has continued. Over the years, one by one, the other booksellers on the row faltered and failed. At some point, Ben Franklin moved around the corner and became a used bookstore. Today it is surrounded by empty storefronts. I’m feeling a bit queazy.

I open the door.

It still smells the same. A grandmotherly clerk sits at the counter. I don’t remember her, but she is just right, perfectly filling her niche next to the old cash register plastered with Public Radio flyers and surrounded by the over-full shelves and stacks of books. It’s still Ben Franklin.

I have forgotten how wonderful the selection is here, quickly adding a pile of books to the clerk’s habitat. The reading balance must be maintained, between inspiration and instruction, entertainment and enlightenment. And I am careful not to overdo in Fiction, lest I reach my weight limit before discovering, in the Reference section, a twenty-pounder that I just have to have.

I spot Don, sitting in the back, as he always has. As I approach, I see he’s a little smaller and grayer, but otherwise much the same. Perhaps the cool dry atmosphere that preserves the books, had also worked on him. Mom was preserved like that too, right to the end.

Don and I exchange a few words, and I feel the oldness emanating from him and the leather-bound books in equal measure. He remembers me. I comment that Worcester had always been a good place for books, and he tells me that five Worcester bookstores have closed in the last year.

Suddenly, it all comes together for me, this aging man, the decay of the city and the loss of its gems, my Mother’s death and the smell of old books. It is a moment experienced with clarity. No, nothing is forever.

After saying goodbye to Don, I go for one last prowl among the racks. A book on organ music catches my eye, reminding me of my father, a great organ enthusiast.

One second later I am receiving a communication from my Mom. I sense that Dad, with more experience beyond, has helped her to find me.

She says “I’m here.” A bold statement from a woman who was certain that death was the end. I am overwhelmed by the sense of her presence. Then it is over, like a spotlight turned off.

Amidst the rubble of my thoughts and the maze of shelves, I find a survivor, a bookstore cat, perhaps the last, sunning in a window. I rub its neck for a long time. No, nothing is forever, and that’s OK.