So this is the book of Roxie. Signed by enough people that it fully filled dozens of pages. Now departed from a long and popular stint (that last word does not do it justice) behind the bar at Starr’s. Where-ever she now will roam. Far from North Hudson.
On that last fully attended night of working there as a bartender, the remembrances were written in pen and pencil, a last gasp of remembrances that were recorded by dozens of patrons showing up to honor what had been. Many were there to sign, often at length, that scrapbook-type-thing that was passed around during her entire last night.
The man next to me asked especially for the chance to write his chapter, and his entry took up more than a page in itself. Several songs spun on the jukebox before he was done. Roxie was at a table there but also far away, at the other end of the horseshoe, saying other farewells and then breaking away for a bit to deliver the book’s written pages to him, and several more paragraphs had also been recorded, from other patrons, in the meantime.
She would not go to another, if only parttime, bartending stint elsewhere in the interim, as so many do. Jumping shift(s) to a nearby city, or all the way into the Twin Cities, or the other eastern end of the county, is old hat, but this is different. Rather it was time for her to ramble on and travel cross-country to the other end of the country, and see more than North Hudson. But I’d bet that in time she’ll be back, even if just picking up an occasional shift, as that’s the way it is done. More chapters, and thus there might be need for a sequel. The same holds true of others who have left the two-state area, for sometimes months or even just weeks, then rethought the idea, even though they said I was a part of that situation, sometimes much to my surprise. I made sure to have gotten a card telling them how much they were valued, and now missed. But then they were back again. Reactions to the fore and aft have often ended in a partial or more swoon, and maybe a tear or two. Or at least stoic acknowledgement. In the latter case after I had pulled out the stops to get a card to her before she left, then I drifted and fell, but tried to make up for it when seeing a co-worker walking down the street, then pulled aside immediately to ask for directions of how to get such a note to her. Then weeks past and she was back again, as has happened with so many servers would just couldn’t be away from their regulars. This when I caught her afterward in the downtown at last, and then was able to give her the card that prefaced it, “I know we’ve not always gotten into long conversations … but it was always important to just touch base.” Stoic response, but it with a twinge, as it resonated. Just when at same, a couple or more of breast cancer charitable benefits. And at extremes as they despite similar emotion, have reacted to impending separation, both a blonde and brunette, within the same month at the same venue. And when again at the same place of service, or just down the block, if years not months, there are the pleading eyes and soft-spoken needs: Do you remember me? How could someone like myself forget.
So many peope can’t tolerate the pain of a farewell, so they dodge it, and you only find out after-the-fact, even though they are in the easy-to-be-encountered field that is the service industry. Through their girlfriends you will later know. Or it is uncanny how you might run into them in a different city, and the truism persists, I was going to tell you come my last night at work … But then they return to the same old haunts, serving the same old drinks, coming and going more then once. And so many end up in their interim at flight attendants and/or personal trainers. A commonality.
And for those farewell cards? Open them now or more likely later. Since they might not be able to cope, at that moment in time, with the groundswell of emotion.