Final Slice

(Or, Actual Ending)

This past October, we hosted the first Cancer Sharks Night of Stories at Pastoral on Congress Street in Boston.

It was a success. A room full of artists, storytellers, and people willing to sit together and listen. Good food. Real stories. The kind of night that reminds you why gathering still matters.

Everything came out of the kitchen Chef Todd Winer built with his team. Todd is my Todd. And Pastoral, even though it will no longer be open, will always remain a place that held us.

Endings carry weight. Even when everyone knows they are coming.

I love when MRIs, PET scans, and infusions end. Those endings feel like relief, but they are brief. I try not to squeeze them too tightly, but I still find myself doing the math quickly. When does the next one start? How much time do I have in between?

I know that for some people, counting days and hours is grounding. For me, it hurts more than it helps. The counting pulls me forward before I’ve had a chance to stand where I am.

So perhaps it would make sense if endings that are truly final brought peace.

But that has not been my experience.

The endings that don’t restart: relationships, homes, businesses, places where people showed up for years, leave a different kind of mark. Not always devastation. But a low, persistent grief that quietly interferes with ordinary life.

I’m not convinced closure exists. Once something has been opened, once it has mattered, I don’t think it ever fully closes again. It can be covered. It can fade. But it doesn’t disappear.

Tonight, Pastoral serves its last pizzas and pours its last drinks on Congress Street.

There will be no next time. No next service. No reopening. Just the end of a place that stood for eleven years through some of the hardest seasons the hospitality industry has known.

And that ending, as much as it hurts, is real.

It deserves to be named. It deserves to be held without rushing past it. It deserves the dignity of being what it is.

Some endings return.
Some don’t.

This one doesn’t.

And that matters.