Me, My Mom & Sears

For Megan Murphy, mourning the end of the famed department store is about much more than nostalgia for sensible slacks and sales ladies with perms.

I had heard the rumours, but I didn’t think it would really happen. Yet, while sipping coffee one morning last October, I saw the headline that proved otherwise. Sears, the unsinkable department store, had hit an iceberg. Initially, I felt embarrassed that the news made me emotional. If I’m being honest, Sears hasn’t been a staple in my life for a couple of decades, so I feel a little culpable for its permanent closing this past January. I should’ve bought more appliances and comforter sets, just to support it. But it’s Sears. Isn’t it always supposed to be there? In this fast-paced, virtual world, it was a bricks and mortar constant that promised overhead fluorescent lighting, sensible slacks and sales ladies with perms.

Sears was, arguably, the preferred store of every 1980s mother, which is really why I miss it—because I miss mine. My mom was a Sears mom. You know the type: practical, strong-willed and understands the value of a dollar. She had a Sears card that she paid off with an actual cheque on the first of every month. On those days, Mom would pull up to the secret back lot of the store in Peterborough, Ont., by the “Women’s Wear” door. She would then tell me or one of my sisters to run in with the bill and “make sure you get it stamped.” I felt very grown up, and when I got back, she’d remind me, “Never buy something unless you have the cash to pay for it.”

My mom has been gone for five years now. It’s true what they say: it gets easier. But when this past Christmas neared, I still missed her terribly. So on one particularly cold and snowy December night, I drove myself to the Sears of my youth, just to be near some essence of her. Pulling open the heavy double doors, I was instantly transported back to my childhood.