I am in mourning.

Actually, I have been in mourning for some time, but it has been more intense the last couple of weeks. In the past few weeks, we have lost three businesses that were more than businesses, but truly part of the communities near me. Sherman’s Store, a traditional country store in Rupert, closed last week. The week before, Scotties Store in Granville, a combination convenience store and diner closed. And now Pawlet Station, the small diner that I work out of most days, writing and taking phone calls, announced that it will be closing at the end of the month.

This is part of a longer trend. Other country stores nearby have gone under in the almost seven years since I moved to Vermont. These were places that served more than food and stuff. They served community. It was in these places that I could linger over a cup of coffee and meet people, or talk over local news, or share the latest joys and tragedies of people that, without these places, I would never have come to know. All over food and coffee that was surprisingly good, sometimes exceptionally good.

When I moved here, there were five of these kinds of places within ten miles. (Which, in this part of Vermont, is practically next door.). Now, there are none.

To get the same kind of place now, I have to go to the Spiral Press Cafe in Manchester, thirty-five minutes away, or to The Round House in Cambridge. NY, forty-five minutes away. We’re used to having to travel a good distance to things in my little corner of Vermont, but that is a little far to go for a good cup of coffee and breakfast before work. But the real draw, the local community, will not be in those places. Those belong to someone else’s community.

I know first hand, on a purely human level, what loss of community does to us. Years and years ago, as I tried to hold together demanding work, being a husband, a father, being active in the church, I found myself just hanging on, doing the things that needed to be done, trying to hold together all the threads and roles of life. I was in those groups and communities, but in the effort to just get the work done, I isolated myself. I stopped connecting with people. Heck, I even stopped connecting with myself.

I thought I was all noble and stuff. I got it all done. I was the one people called on and counted on. For years and years. Until (and I bet you already guessed this.) I came undone.

Isolation is the enemy. Even for an introvert like me.

Isolation leaves us to whither, to weaken, to slowly drain away. It’s rarely a dramatic death until the end, when we fall apart, when the doors close. It’s happened to me. I’ve seen it happen to other people.

The same thing happens in communities. I know a bit more than the public version of what happened in all of these places because I had come to know the people. Some of them were good business people in a strange situation. Some were pretty awful business people. All of them did what they did more because they loved their community than to make money. There are easier ways to make money, trust me. Often, their love of the community caused them to made business decisions that helped people, but in the end, hurt the business.

But in the end, all closed for the same reason most businesses close – There weren’t enough people willing to support them.

And there is a cost to community. It doesn’t just happen because of proximity. People have to invest in it, claim it, support it, open themselves to it. Too often though, we just take it for granted, and we don’t understand our part, or the value of community until it is gone.

The cost is not huge. For instance, at my beloved Pawlet Station, I could get an egg sandwich with home fries for about a dollar more than I could get the same thing at McDonalds. And it is far, far better that the stamped out fast food. I got atmosphere. I got waitresses that talked to me. There was an atmosphere there, with all of us who ate there talking to each other. We simply had to show up and spend that extra dollar.

I am aware that the meaning of community is changing due to the internet. There are lots of people, and I am one, who have found meaningful community in different internet groups. I am part of a group called “The Creative Group” that has turned into an astonishing collection of people who have come to know each other well. We support each other and the work we each do. We mourn and rejoice with each other. But the power of that connection is kept alive by a twice a year gathering in Cambridge, NY where we gather and hug and talk, where all the internet connections deepen by being together. For some of us, like myself, it is an easy journey. But others travel far, from all over they country, to join together. That journey, as well as the effort to care and share and encourage is their investment in the community, and it is what keeps it alive.

But when we are local and things and groups have always been there, we tend to forget their importance. We take it all for granted. And if we don’t stop it, or invest by showing up, paying a dollar or few more for things, offer to help out each other, the community dies. And we are isolated.

I wish I knew the answer. I believe in these kinds of gathering places. I believe they are important. And when they die, all of us suffer. All of us are wounded. If I knew the answer, I’d be trying to start my own such place. I think they are that important.

Because isolation is the enemy. And right now, right here, the enemy is winning.

Be well. Travel wisely.

Tom