Coping with losing a "home away from home"

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This is a hard one for me, and I know I have to accept it. When I was 10, and started being fascinated with TV sets and TV repair, I befriended the owner of a local TV repair shop in West Los Angeles. I'd go hang out there and learn stuff, and could take old TV sets that were going to be dumped. At age 13, I got a job there after school, and then worked there full time basically from 1985-1998 or so, and then part-time for a few more years. The TV shop was in the same location, and was arranged exactly the same way, and with the same people all these years (with exception of the bookkeeper, who passed away at age 90-something a few years ago). I still go there to visit and take old TV sets that interest me, which otherwise would be junked, and I don't know how it's going to feel when it's gone. Finally, with the economy what it is, and with TV sets not being repaired anymore, the shop is closing this week after being in business nearly 75 years. I found out about it 6 weeks ago, and have been drawn to making the 125-mile round trip down there just about every day to visit. It's an emotional rollercoaster, and I get sad when I see other people who are "friends of the shop" and friends mutually known, come by to pay respects. It feels like I'm losing the last connection to my youth. A dried-out bottle of hot sauce was still in the fridge; right where I put it in 1988 or so, when an antique refrigerator collector bought the fridge last week. Yesterday they wheeled out the file cabinets that I organized so many times when I worked there, and I grabbed a few things to keep as reminders of the shop.

I don't know why this is so hard for me, but I think knowing that it's a characteristic of high-functioning autism, helps me to deal with it and not to ridicule myself so much, I guess. It's not as if I were losing my job, or anything that would actually cause me hardship. The owner of the shop is my friend, and will stay so. I don't need the occasional part-time job anymore, so the fact is that it's not harming me in any way that the shop is going to be gone. Simply a forced emotional detachment that I'm not choosing of my own accord. I just sort of wish the place would "be there" for the rest of my life, but of course that's unrealistic.

Just sharing this, in case anyone else feels this way about similar things happening in their lives, and in case it helps to know there's someone else out there in the same situation...

Charles

I have a regular 'haunt' that is still operating, though I'm dreading the day that no longer happens. I depend on it as a source for many of my supplies and the owner has stated several times in the past that when he dies someone will come along and chuck it all in the dumpster. I have entertained thoughts of trying to buy him out but besides the huge financial obstacle there is the burden of having to know about running a business on that scale, I already hardly make do as a subcontractor.

I thought I was the only one that felt this, and I'm glad that you posted this.
For me, whenever anything like the sort of thing you described would happen, it would feel like I was losing a part of my childhood or a connection to a happier time. It was like I was losing a part of myself, slipping away even further in time from when everything was better and I was happier. It's why I hate change, because each change feels like a push towards more unhappier times (parents dying, and no-one caring to bother with me.)

This happened to me last year. There was a book store I used to spend hours at a time in, sometimes all day on weekends, from the time I was 11 or 12; I loved it there, it allowed an escape from all the things I didn't want to think about. Well, last year it started to go downhill, and very quickly went out of business. I really miss that old place, and, yeah, there are other book stores to hang out in, but this one was special to me.