The Walgreens Funeral
And My Conquest of Grief Through Renewed Love for the CVS Across the Street
As chronicled by Orson Shakespeare McSeinfeld
ORSON SHAKESPEARE McSEINFELD
I buried a Walgreens last week.
Not literally—though I would have, had zoning permitted.
No, this was the closing of my Walgreens.
The one where they knew my name.
Where the floor tiles squeaked only in A♭ minor.
Where the pharmacy tech with the hollow eyes could fill my prescription just by sighing.
It died quietly.
No grand clearance sale.
No coupon vigil.
Just a handwritten sign on the door:
"Store permanently closed. Please visit our nearest location two miles away."
Two miles?
Two miles may as well be two hundred
when you’ve built your life across a single intersection.
I stood at the locked doors,
gazing through the dusty glass,
past the gutted candy aisle and the abandoned cooler
where the Diet Squirts once shimmered like sacred relics.
In my mind, I saw the Walgreens as it was—
bright, humming, stocked with seasonal displays
no one asked for but everyone judged.
Easter candy in February.
Halloween in August.
Christmas the moment you stopped digesting turkey.
But loss does not linger in stasis.
It compels us to move.
And so I crossed the street.
To the CVS.
The CVS had always been there—
smaller, dimmer, smelling faintly of warm toner and disappointment.
Its self-checkouts were temperamental.
Its employees, aloof as minor royalty.
I had once sworn I would never defect.
But grief changes a man.
The first visit felt wrong.
I half-expected to be shunned,
to be marked as “Walgreens stock” by their scanners.
Instead… I was welcomed.
Not warmly. Not with fanfare.
But with a quiet, transactional acceptance.
The aisles were narrower.
The shelves taller.
It felt like walking into someone else’s house uninvited—
and realizing their fridge is better stocked than yours.
And over time—
I learned the ways of CVS.
Where they hid the good sodas.
How their clearance bin could be a portal to absurd treasure.
Why their receipt, unfolding like an ancient scroll,
was not a nuisance but a prophecy.
Weeks passed.
The Walgreens building stood empty.
A husk.
A tombstone in beige stucco.
One night, in a dream, I visited again.
But instead of fluorescent lights,
the inside glowed with a sunset.
The shelves were full.
The pharmacy tech smiled.
And when I woke,
I was holding a CVS ExtraCare card.
I have not forgotten my Walgreens.
I never will.
But I have learned that across the street,
under different branding,
with different quirks and different frustrations,
a man can rebuild.
A man can love again.