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So here it is.

The last Sears department store in Illinois closed at Woodfield Mall on Sunday. The retailer opened its first store in the merchandise market for nearly a century and now looks very, very...beige, at the end a couple of hours. Like beige on beige. Like the color of Toughskins back to school in 1974, the color of your uncle's Corolla in 1982, and the color of DMV linoleum in any decade.

It opened on the same day Woodfield, named after Sears executive Robert Wood and department store giant Marshall Field, opened in 1971. It was the largest Sears at the time, with 416,000 square feet of sales area. Judging from what it looks like at the end of 2021, it is hard to imagine what will change in 50 years.

The appearance now resembles a vinyl carport in a crumbling neighborhood, surrounded by flint-style artificial stone walls. The interior is still organized by clusters of familiar old goods-wrenches, mattresses, baby shoes, slacks that never pleated-except that everything looks a bit dirty and loses its freshness. Even the smell of rubber that once sweetened parts of power tools has been removed. The video monitors of expensive displays are now dark and crooked. The Samsung showroom was pulled away from its mooring and its electrical appliances were gone, leaving a bunch of frayed wires.

Large trash cans can hold mannequins in a landfill.

The home furnishing department was reduced to an ironing board, just as the retail world was blinking, a damaged doormat with "Goodbye" written on it.

If you go to the last Sears department store in Illinois-if you go, bring a few tissues, because this is a tearful story-you won't think of the once prosperous consumer destination, Rather, it is one of the roadside stalls in the dystopian thriller, the kind that wanderers sell whatever pieces they can salvage from the post-apocalyptic landscape.

Above the sporting goods department, is a billion-inch banner:

Just like we need to be reminded. There are some tennis rackets, some minor league gloves, two NordicTrack slalom and too many packed table tennis balls. That is the sports part. Coming soon, just in time for the holidays, this is the loneliest toy department ever. All three of its shelves. Plastic NASCAR helmet. Two Star Wars action figures. Unicorn soap. A football. Something called Foodie Roos Chips ("I look, smell and feel like my favorite food").

If you reach a certain age, you will cringe. When I was a kid, part of every fall revolved around spending too much time thinking hard on every page of the huge Sears Christmas catalog, circling Santa’s thoughts.

No wonder a woman passing by shook her head sadly, awed by desolation and grief for loss. She leaned on an old man she didn't know, and he was sitting on his walker, looking at the wasteland in front of him. "It's a pity," she whispered.

"The end of an era," she said.

She was Angie Sanchez of Bolingbrook, and she glanced at it before it disappeared. "I grew up with Sears," she said. "Everyone I know grew up with Sears. You will come at Christmas, partly because of the decorations. You know, their Christmas tree. There used to be real happiness here."

Beside her is a cardboard box with loose decorations, indecently wrapped in plastic. The only Christmas tree is tabletop and broken, worth a few dollars. Sanchez ranked fourth in a family with 13 children. Her father works for the Inland Steel Company and feeds them on welders' wages.

"I want to know what happened in this country," she said. "Only the rich are favored. We forget what we have-even if it's just Sears. We forgot to value things, and now we have... Amazon."

Indeed, once, the first floor of your Sears department store smelled like popcorn.

The display of its non-branded Atari game consoles is a common practice for children in the neighborhood.

I remember going to buy a new washing machine with my grandfather, and bring the AC/DC vinyl record "For those About to Rock, we salute you" when I go home. I remember I was waiting for a ping pong table in the oversized merchandise window. I remember I bought school uniforms and found a bunch of sweaters. It looked like the design team had withdrawn 25 years ago. I remember Sears jeans look like slacks. I remember Howard Johnson across the street from Sears and a basket of clam sticks.

I remember the very specific American theater of Sears Department Store. It had a shared middle-class identity and was cut, partly because of the convenience and prices of Wal-Mart and Amazon, partly because wages could not keep up with productivity, and partly because of unions. Decline, shared facts, etc., and more. A huge American middle class made Sears. In exchange, Sears provided Kenmore and craftsmen, Toughskins and Discover. Whenever I see an imitation of family photos on Instagram, I think of the portrait of quasi-happy Sears hanging in the home with a mottled background. I thought of tens of thousands of Sears suite houses still standing all over the country.

Now all the artifacts, such as the metal filing cabinets and office photocopiers in the Woodfield store, were dragged out of the backstage, and fell on the floor with a plop, putting price tags on them.

In addition, Sears is no longer even the real Sears-after a long decline and bankruptcy in 2018, it was annexed by the larger Hoffman Estates-based Transformco, which also owns all the remaining parts of Kmart. A Transformco spokesperson said in a statement that the Schaumburg store is not actually the last Sears store in Illinois. There are 11 remaining stores in Illinois, especially the Sears hometown store.

In other words, this is the last Sears department store in Illinois, and for shoppers of a certain age, it is the same as the last. In its heyday, Sears, once the country's largest retailer, had 3,000 stores, so naturally this Woodfield store is not alone. After Sunday, the Sears Department Store in Pasadena, California also died. Maui, Hawaii; and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Long Island recently lost the last Sears department store; Brooklyn lost the last Sears on the eve of Thanksgiving.

In fact, seeing that Sears Department Store is still the backbone of a large shopping mall, like a window, you can see how stormy and unattended the Mall of America has become since the 21st century. Sears is at the southern end of Woodfield, while JCPenney is at the northern end; Macy's and Nordstrom occupy the port and starboard sides.

On the day of my visit, about a week before it closed, most of the ship was submerged.

A bowl of four pulp apples costs $5. There are many lampshades, not a single lamp can be seen. I remember I needed a mobile phone charger, but they only have power cords for several generations of Apple devices. But they have a bunch of "ultrasonic" humidifiers and some candle holders. There is an 80% discount on diamonds.

Marilyn DeAngelis stood behind the jewelry counter.

She is 77 years old and has been working here for 22 years. She said that she was once one of the "cosmetic girls". She works in the entire store, in all different positions. When she was talking, she tried to tie a thin necklace on a small display. It seems that the introduction is still very important. It seems that 60% or 80% discount is not its own temptation.

Finally, she grabbed the button, hung the chain on the bracket, slid it back into the glass cabinet, and raised her head. She smiled sadly. She said that she must find a new job. She likes this. She has no choice. Too bad, all of this. She will miss the Christmas decorations and even the weirdness of Black Friday. But most of the time, she will miss the Sears department store. "Again, it's just bigger."