I was told once that while growing up is a series of discoveries, growing old is a series of losses.

I know I'm not old. I'm only 33, and as much as that seemed unbearably ancient in my childhood, it certainly doesn't feel that way now. I still play games, I still goof around, and I still live rooted in my imagination.

But the losses...well, I'm starting to feel them more and more.

I was on my way to a writer's workshop this weekend, taking advantage of a rare opportunity to break away from my routine and do nothing but write all weekend long. Breaks for chitchat and the consumption of malted beverages included of course, but the focus was to be primarily the written word.

Even after five years of online journalling and one semi-magnificent unpublished manuscript, the act of creative writing still feels like some new and rare thing. Almost a secret luxury, a decadent exploration of brain cells enjoyed at the expense of less pleasurable activities. Like laundry.

So, mind full of plot ideas and lines for this year's NaNoWriMo novel, a lofty and brain-stretching piece about the very first hotel in Earth orbit and the reality show being staged in its weightless halls, I was driving to the Friday night session. I was already four days behind in my goal, having a mere 1,300 words completed, when I should have been more in the range of 8,000, so this weekend was going to be key to making up that difference.

The recreation centre where the event was being held is only a short distance from my parents' house, the place where I grew up. It is also only a few blocks from where my childhood church is.

Or was.

See, the church was running out of money. The building was getting old, the roof was in bad need of repair, and the congregation was shrinking. Few new members plus a congregation mostly past retirement meant there were fewer people in the pews every year.

After much hard discussion, the decision was made to sell the building. The congregation would join with two others, pool the funds from the sale of all three buildings and start anew. A new building, a new mandate, and a new chance for spiritual growth in a new and vibrant community.

And so it went. The building was sold, the hymnals and wall hangings moved to a new location, and the began congregation driving a little further every Sunday to gather with all their new friends in a beautiful facility.

I didn't move with them.

I stopped going to church regularly when I was a teenager. After years of whining and cajoling, Mom gave us the choice: go or don't go. It was up to us. I made the unsurprising choice most young kids would, I expect. I would stay home and sleep in. And I've never gone regularly since. I'm what's commonly known as a C&E Christian. Christmas and Easter. And I don't usually go on Easter.

But I never really left it.

My Grandfather has pictures of the church being built, some forty or so years ago. The first meetings of our local Scouting group were held in his basement while they waited for construction to be completed and they could shift the meetings there.

Between attending Church events and Scout meetings, I was at that building two or three times a week for most of my life. After services, I would stand at the bottom of the stairs, holding open the door to the lower hall while all the old ladies wound past for their tea. At Christmas, I would help Dad set up the barely-hanging-together Nativity scene. The older Scouting branches, the Venturers and Rovers, held dances there two or three times a year. I was always there for those, climbing the twelve-foot ladder to detach the florescent lights - some quirk of electrical engineering ensured that if the lights in the main hall were off, so were the lights in the bathrooms, so whatever mood lighting we desired for slow-song cuddling was obtained by dint of precarious labor beforehand.

I knew every inch of the place, every nook and cranny. I knew where they the extension cords were stored. I knew where the spare kitchen key was hidden. I knew the places in the loft too weak to support a grown person's weight. Even though I was too scared of the dark to spend more than a few moments in my own home's basement with the lights out, I could walk from one end of the church's lower hall to the other in pitch darkness without a stumble or quiver.

That building was as much a home to me as my parent's house. I grew up there.

Tricia was married there. That was where I wanted to be married.

I had to pull over to the side of the road and get out of the car. I'm not often in the neighborhood these days, but when I am, my gaze always moves off the road to glance at the building that was such a part of my life.

But it was gone.

There's one of those iron temporary fences around the excavation and a construction trailer off to one side. The old Church sign now has a clever faux-European place name on it in fancy script, and there's a signboard advertising 47 units of luxury condo-style living.

It's been gone for weeks, Mom told me when I called her, although I could tell just from looking at the site. The excavation no longer had those rough, bruised looking edges that you get from a fresh cut, but were smoothed and weathered, the earth having lost the shape of what used to be there.

I'm sure I made some sort of maudlin spectacle, my fingers clutching at the fence, my mouth hanging open, tears dripping down my cheeks, but I did not, could not care.

It felt like someone had died.

It's only a building, goes the conventional wisdom, and I suppose that's so. The congregation moved on, after all, and they were dedicated to that place and the worship they shared there. I don't doubt there were some tears when it was demolished, but they were able to see it coming and grow through it, move past it. I never even knew it was happening until it was long over.

My own fault. I'm always guilty of lack of communication with my family. As upset as I can be that no one called and told me it was happening, I know deep down that they all assumed I already knew. And I would have, if I had kept in touch better.

To come around the bend in the road, and to find the church was simply no longer there, in the place where it had always been, in the little chunk of my personal universe permanently allocated to its presence.... I was stunned, shocked. And hurt. Very, very hurt.

As children, we firmly believe the things we love will never go away. Nothing will ever change and no one will ever die. The monuments of our childhood stand eternal in our memories, touchstones we can always return to when we need to recharge our souls. When we drive past out childhood homes, we shake our heads and say, "Nothing ever changes here." Which is just how we want it to be. Change is a hard thing, and we never get used to it. We only get over it.

And I'll get over this. This pain is nothing compared to what I felt at the loss of Granddad, or Gramma, or Auntie Dee - a whole universe of difference. Less of a knife to the stomach and more of a sharp rap to your head, the kind that brings tears, but not any lasting damage.

Still, saying it's not as bad doesn't make the pain any less or any less real. Perspective is not a Band-Aid.

Soon, perhaps as soon as next summer, 47 new families will be living where I used to go to worship. I guess that's okay - I mean, I'm not going to turn into some crazy dynamite-toting nut just because my church isn't exactly where I left it.

But I know that every time I drive down that road, my eyes will still turn and look for it. My subconscious mind will take control before I realize what's happening, making me look for the invisible outline of a place that I will never see again.

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