Grieving What Was: Then and Now

 I grew up on the outer fringe of a new suburb, our freshly-built ranch house abutting a gnarled apple orchard, a meadow of goldenrod and milkweed and Queen Anne’s Lace, a ravine that plunged down to a creek. As kids, we travelled in small groups: myself, Sheree, Renee, Timmy, and Mary Ellen. Sometimes we’d venture into the world beyond our neighborhood and walk down to the one-lane road that ran along the Schuylkill River.

About a mile down, we’d find what we were looking for—a concrete structure rooted just next to the river. Its massive columns rose to a highway, which began its launch across the river—and abruptly stopped, midair. I remember it fascinated me, this strange fragment of a former time, this monument of a daring hope left unfulfilled. We named it the Bridge to Nowhere.

There was another compelling structure just down the road. A two-story, dun-colored building, crumbling at its corners. It used to be a hotel, my mother told me, and I pictured the women in bright dresses, laughing and tossing their glossy hair as they twirled under colored lights. Boisterous families pouring out of windows and doors. Now it was mostly empty, a few old men on the porch, sitting on metal chairs, smoking and staring into space.

Yet farther down, on the high bluff over-looking the river, was the house my friend Marlene had lived in. The bluff was so high it took several flights of steps to reach the top. The house itself was a massive structure of brick and stone, which puzzled me: who, besides Marlene, lived there? I don’t recall Marlene’s mother hovering nearby, nor any mention of a father. There was an older sister, Peaches, who was said to be crippled, confined to a wheelchair. But I never saw her. The lamps were always dimmed, as if someone’s eyes would be hurt by the light.

These memories make me wonder about the place I grew up in. Why had the bridge been abandoned, the hotel gone defunct, Marlene’s home gone steeped in shame and absence? Surely there had once been joy? Happy noise? Love? What had died, well before we moved to the area? Was it the dying coal mines, the shuttered steel mills, the hosiery and cough drop and pretzel factories going silent?

Children invest what they see with meaning: The Bridge to Nowhere, the old hotel, a lonely mansion. Scenes of a happy past, abruptly ended. A vacancy, where hope used to be.

Like now.