The Honored Dead

I just discovered that the website for Gendler's is still active. I don't know how I feel about that. I won't lie, looking through it and seeing the pics of the ol' store kind of made me a bit misty eyed.

I don't mean to be insensitive to any of you that have ever lost someone you were close to - I haven't - but I imagine this is what it feels like. A big part of my identity was wrapped up in that store. Sure, I didn't make any money there, but I loved it. I enjoyed what I did and it never felt like work. I made no money and enjoyed my job as opposed to now where I make no money and kind of hate it. Man, if you're not going to make anything working, you should at least be doing what you love.

I loved Gendler's. I am still in mourning for it. There are days that I wake up, half expecting the last year and a half to have been some sort of dream and that I'm not getting up to go to the Putnam, but am instead going to the wine store. It wasn't the work itself that made it great. It was my coworkers - Jim, Steve, Andy, Joan, Drea, Erin, Jeremy, Steph, Gabby, Jonathan (when he worked), Eilene (when she worked ), and even Jan. It was our regulars, who were apart of the family - Dale and Alice, Kris, Jamie and Bobby Jo, Walt, Kim, Karen, and Josh and Sam. It was the other customers, like Don Bealer, William and Pam Trotter, Bob Leaf, Ted Dorrough, Scott McWinney, Elizabeth Hill, the Friedrichs, and so many others. It was the reps, like Chris, the Bens, or Stoney.

The work was fun. The people were great. It was the most rewarding thing I've ever been apart of and I miss it, terribly. Between finding this website and going to Steve's wine tasting for the Wine Cellar last weekend, I've been reminded exactly how much I've lost. And that makes me sad. I doubt I'll ever find anything like it again. It was a once in a lifetime experience and it was over much too soon.