cafe des artistes closed, and I'm just finding out about it now

I just got depressed. it came on all of a sudden like a ton of bricks.
And whats weirder is that its over something so unexpected.
I just found out that Cafe des Artistes closed. And the worst part is that it closed 2 yrs ago. 2 yrs, and I just found out now. That fact is sort of astonishing to me.

Cafe des artes is, or was, this amazing restaurant in NY, on the 1st fl of the Hotel des Artistes which used to be an artists residence/studio space building. The walls of the restaurant were covered in amazing works of art done by the residents who lived above.
It was very pricey and the kind of place where men had to wear jackets. I only went twice once for dinner and once for drinks.
The time I went to dinner, the food was amazing and the atmosphere transported me back to its heyday.
The time I went for drinks I sat at the bar with a friend, had way too many cosmos (the one and only time I drank cosmopolitans) and ended up talking long into the night with a local NY news caster, the late Peter Jennings in case you're interested.

I only went into the restaurant twice but I walked by it and looked into its windows at that amazing art work at least once a week for the majority of my life. My cousins lived on the same street, my apt was 10 blocks away but I grew up in their apt as much as I did my own.

I would purposely walk down one street instead of the other just so I could peer into cafe's windows. I loved the idea that if you couldn't pay your bill a painting would be accepted. Those days ended long before my time but I loved that it happened at all and that I got to benefit from it. It became a ritual.

My other connection with it was that my Aunt Laura used to make their desserts with her friend Madge, that was until the health dept found out that 2 young moms were cooking out of their home kitchens and selling it to a fancy restaurant.

Aunt Laura taught me to cook, instilled in me my love of cooking, showed me that by putting love into the food that you cook for your loved ones is a way of expressing that love.

The reason that I didn't know that Cafe closed is that in 2003 Aunt Laura died of breast cancer and they sold the apartment. I miss her more than I can put into words.

I guess the reason seeing that Cafe closed 2 yrs ago upset me so much was cause it made me realize how different life has been since Aunt Laura died. I can't believe that I hadn't walked down 67th st in 2 yrs. I can't believe its been almost 8 yrs since she was here with us.