Can't hide from the 'here today, gone tomorrow' drumbeat

Despite the card in my wallet, I can only assume I am no longer one of Brian Mix's VIPs.

Through many years and at least two vehicles, Mix and I have been meeting regularly at the Jiffy Lube he managed near my home.

I knew him well enough to expect a mini-lecture if I arrived beyond the 3,000 milestone between oil changes. He and his employees knew me well enough to skip the sales pitches and to know I preferred my own freeze-proof washer fluid to theirs in winter.

A hundred miles past 3,000 on Easter weekend, I cruised up to his door to find the place shuttered. Maybe it had been closed for weeks, but I thought they might be taking the holiday weekend off, so I went back Monday morning. Still closed.

Not wanting to believe one of the minor pillars of my day-to-day life had collapsed, I tried calling.

"The number you have dialed … has been disconnected."

Just like that, Brian Mix and his "well-oiled machine" were gone.

There's a lot of that going around these days. One day you are working closely with a colleague. The next day he is gone. One day you have neighbors. The next, they are gone. One day, you are a valued customer. The next you are scrambling to find a new place to get your basic services.

Just hours after the "disconnected" phone message, I walked to the cash register at the Wilson's Leather store at Spring Hill Mall, a nice black leather travel carry-on bag in hand.

"You know you can't return this, right?" the clerk asked.

Digging for my credit card, I didn't immediately respond to her query.

"You understand the sale is final because we're closing?"

The "50-75 percent off" signs should have been a dead giveaway, I suppose.

"I didn't know that. But that's OK, I'll take it anyway," I said, still processing the information that one of my regular holiday and birthday shopping stops was going the way of Brian Mix.

"So, do you have a chance to transfer somewhere else?" I asked the young woman, of an age to be paying college tuition or loans, certainly to be making a car payment,

"No," she said. "There's no place for us to go. Wilson's is closing most stores."

"Woodfield, too?" I asked.

"Well, no, that one will stay open," she said. "But it'll carry different stuff and have a different name."

I asked how long the store at Spring Hill Mall might be open.

"They said we'll be closed by sometime in May, so if you see something you like, you'd better get it now."

I was signing the credit card receipt when she offered a remarkably compassionate addendum in spite of her own circumstances.

"It was worse for managers and regional sales people," she said. "They got fired the same day the closings were announced. No notice at all."

Here today.

Gone tomorrow.

It's the quiet drumbeat we try to ignore until we are confronted with the reality, fearful those caught in its reverberations tomorrow might just be us.