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Sometimes I think of guiding my husband, who died four years ago, through the world that we now live in. Well, it’s even more immediate than that: the city and neighborhood we live in. Change has been so pronounced that I can’t imagine that anyone or any organization attempted to prevent it from happening.

Four years! That doesn’t seem much. I mean, the New Jersey neighborhood I lived in for over twenty years hardly changed at all. The supermarket at the little center might have acquired a new ownership, or maybe just a new name. The sandwich shop became an ice cream shop. The drugstore remained, as did the pizza place, the gas station, the postoffice, the hardware store.

Where would I guide Bruce through? Our local street, for instance. Four years ago there were a few holdouts – the bookstore, the stained glass place, the candle and soap shop, the several clothing shops, the bank that we opened an account at, Radio Shack. Those disappeared, along with a number of others replaced by care-taking establishments: skin care, muscle tone, massage, yoga, karate, pet care. He wouldn’t recognize all this.

That part, our local street, is disappointing, but not crushing. What’s crushing is downtown San Francisco. I think of leading him through – well, he never had to be “led” since we often went down together – but I mean as a tour-guide from the present leading the ghost of the past – and a fairly recent past! Powell Street has been abandoned for years. People line up for the cable-car, surprisingly, but gone is the Gap on the corner, H & M on the next block, the big shoe store replaced by Uniclo which is also gone and so on. Tourists must amuse themselves with a Burger King and a Sephora—the only choices. Once there was the enormous San Francisco Center across Market Street, but Nordstrom—in an earth-shattering (to me) move—moved out of the top floors and the rest of the building is dismally following suit, including its multi-plex theater.

But the place that almost caused me to cry is the little center at Bryant and 9th where we went to Trader Joe’s, often stopping at Bed Bath and Beyond to look or get a few things, crossing to Nordstrom rack mainly to use the bathrooms, but always going upstairs to check out men’s shoes to see if there were any in Bruce’s size. I’d peruse the racks of blouses or sweaters or handbags and often buy something I really liked. We’d go into Pier One and get holiday glasses or new placemats. Parking was often a problem because the center was so popular. When I was there the other day—the one that I had to fight tears against—I could park anywhere. Trader Joe’s seemed alive and well in the middle of what seemed to be bombed-out. A half-demolished Nordstrom rack (or what once was), empty Pier One (which became Ulta which became nothing), empty former bank and Pete’s Coffee, shell of the Bed Bath and Beyond. Parking was easy.

What was not easy was taking in the desolation of it all. Four years? Were there any attempts? Or was change beyond what anyone could foresee?