Please pardon an unusual column this week.  A long time business in Madison, Connecticut has shuttered its doors, somewhere I spent many mornings before heading to work.
I made many friends there and now everyone has scattered.

The Madison Coffee Shop closed its doors for a final time on Saturday, December 24th 2016, leaving a hole in the lives of its loyal customers.

Image from:
CJP Photos

Here’s a different perspective from Dan Mulvey:
The Madison Coffee Shop: Where Everyone Knows Your Name
an English Teacher at Daniel Hand High School in Madison, Connecticut when I attended.  The Madison Coffee Shop became like a second home to me over the course of its existence, but especially in the last ten years.  So many experiences I had there over the years.  

–The business changed hands three times since I started visiting when I moved to Madison in 1978.

–The front window being decorated for each holiday and season.

–Halloween especially turned first time visitors heads.  Hanging from the ceiling over one of the counters, a life size boat with a mannequin lying down and one arm over the side.

You know that saying:
Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda?

I wished now that I’d taken pictures of that.  At the time however, my focus was less on photography.

–And oh man. During the second ownership while I’d been going, who could forget having to wear your winter coat in the middle of summer?  Ice cold with the air conditioner pumping at full throttle.  As I’m writing this now I THINK I FINALLY understand why:
The heat in the kitchen must have been as unbearable as the cold in the restaurant.

–Meeting up in the morning with my friends.  (We all picked out our own places to sit and returned there each morning like homing pigeons.

That’s what I will miss most:
The gathering.  

And the convenience of the location.  Just across the street from the Scranton Library where I work.  I’d park behind the coffee shop in the morning, go in for about an hour have a quick bite to eat when I didn’t eat at home and sit and talk with all my friends.  With the Madison Coffee Shop now closed, there is no easy place downtown to grab a breakfast sandwich and walk across to work.

Everyone will adjust and we’ll find a new home but at the moment I feel displaced. Change is inevitable.  Embrace it or be defined by it.

Thanks to Wayne and all his wait staff who over the years worked to help their customers feel at home:

Images from:
CJP Photos

Be Happy!  Be Well!  Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
—
Chris

Once you realize that life is eternal,
That our souls our eternal,
That we return to light and physical over and over;

We then lose all our distress
We then lose all our fear of dying.  For there truly is no end.