And so another Valley retail giant bites the dust, and with it, another snippet of my childhood.

My earliest memories of Gottschalks involve hiding my four-year-old self amid the racks of clothes, scaring my mom half to death and thinking it was pretty funny.

I guess it doesn̢۪t help that most of my fondest memories are tied to places that either no longer exist or are on their way out.

I spent the first eight years of my life at the Village Green apartment complex in Sunnyside, and I remember everything: walking down Clovis Ave. to Winchell̢۪s, with my dad, Sunday mornings for donuts and orange juice; rolling around in the giant pumpkin on the preschool playground.

Winchell̢۪s is no longer there, though the giant pumpkin still exists, comfy in its weedy patch on the abandoned preschool lot. (Sometimes I fantasize about having it dropped in my backyard.)
But I know this is nothing new or unique; time passes and landscapes change.

It̢۪s just that I usually don̢۪t realize how much I miss a specific time or place until a couple of decades after the fact.

It̢۪s probably a good thing I have a penchant for remembering the happier times over the sad, but I always end up forgetting that people mean so much more than places.

This was never clearer than three years ago when my mom̢۪s dad succumbed to congenital heart failure at the VA hospital in Palo Alto.

He was a shell of his former self at the end, shrunk to skin and bone, but he still had those same all-knowing pale blue eyes that let me know he was still in there.

After the funeral, we had to clear out his house and sell it, and there were five decades of memories packed within those walls; this was the place where my mom and her siblings had grown up.

It was then that I realized that it was just a house, and that he was what had made it special.

Sure, the ghosts of the past—every fight, every laugh—lingered on like a distant echo, but he was no longer there. He’d taken his warmth, his generosity, his humor and humility with him when he checked out.

The past becomes more important to me as I grow older, and it̢۪s the people I cherish the most, not the places.

We̢۪re on this earth for such a short time as it is, it̢۪s best to make the most of the time we have with our loved ones right now, while we have the chance to appreciate them, instead of waiting until they̢۪ve been gone for two decades.

Someday I̢۪d like to publish a book of all the stories he ever told me, which I wrote down long before his dementia set in.

Some of the people he told me of are long dead, but not forgotten; I think everyone should be remembered.

I guess when it comes right down to it, love is all we have; it̢۪s what lives on after we̢۪ve died, and I̢۪ll never forget what he said to me on his deathbed, clutching my hand between his own.

“I love you.â€Â