The last lunch

 

This photograph is of me at "my" booth, with my young friend Gabriela (she/her/hers), who was the last employee hired by Bar Verde at the Eaton Centre before Nordstrom's corporate overlords in the Pacific Northwestern United States decided to blow up the work lives of 2500 young people north of the 49th parallel.

I stopped by for lunch this afternoon for the last time, and to say goodbye to some staff members who had become friends. My friend Richard, who was the manager there four years ago, came into town to join me for a beer, a reconnection, and a reminiscence.

Over the course of the afternoon, may ex-staff members dropped by to say goodbye to "their" restaurant, and share a drink for their friends and former colleagues—itself a commentary on what kind of a place Bar Verde was, and what sort of people it attracted, both as customers and as staff.

Folks said some very, very lovely things to me, personal things that wouldn't make sense to anyone who wasn't familiar with the situation and circumstances, but which, at sixty, I treasure vastly.

One pithy observation, however was too good not to share: my friend Clint noted that I was like the late Queen, in that I'd had almost as many Bar Verde managers as she'd had Prime Ministers.

A very bittersweet afternoon, all told. I was glad to walk home through the extended, pre-spring sunlight after saying my goodbyes. This would not have been the ideal moment for pitch-black skies and wet snow.