I complained last year that our local Sainsbury’s was doomed – the lease was expiring; the landlord wanted to redevelop – and so it came to pass. It closed on my sister’s 40th birthday, which felt like adding insult to injury. We were tempted to go from celebration breakfast to all-day wake/vigil/protest outside, but the weather was rubbish. Instead, we bid muted goodbyes to a key city-centre amenity, repository of our family history and free, easy parking spot. I’m now condemned to reverse anxiously and ineptly into small spaces – pre-emptive apologies to everyone who gets stuck behind me.

There was a petition, but should I, personally, have tried to save it? My husband thinks so – he’s been urging me to set up a burning-tyre barricade on the roundabout outside for months (his answer to anything requiring protest; they learn this stuff in primary school in France). I tried to distract him by asking whether we could prise the lower-case S off the giant Sainsbury’s sign at the entrance as a souvenir. But the next time we went past, even that was gone.

So it’s over: the site will become a “vibrant mixed-use community” (no idea) and life will go on, sad and significantly less orange. We are not OK, not OK at all. My sister tried Morrisons, but wasn’t won over; my stepfather is stuck in the denial phase of Kübler-Ross and doesn’t want to talk about it. I went to Waitrose, which was chaotically rammed with confused displaced people and resentful regulars, like January in the gym.

Between this and the shock closure of York’s Margaret Howell discount shop – where will I get mid-calf tweed skirts and boxy woollens to cosplay a 1930s sapphic poet now? – I wonder what is left for me here (apart from history, beauty, family, community, Bettys tearoom, etc). I’ve just spent five minutes looking at a Google gallery of candid snaps of “our” Sainsbos: trolleys under leaden skies, discounted lager, freezer full of Quorn pieces, depleted shelf of baguettes. I might set it to sad music and send it round the family WhatsApp.

• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist