It’s the shoes for me. Whether looking or not, it’s the shoes that get me.
Opening our closet and seeing the back of your well worn Obos. You didn’t have many shoes but you wore the ones you had to death. Maybe that’s why it is so significant to see them. Tucked away in places that I would have put them up for you, if too many were gathered at the front door. Or placed onto the rack in the closet above the clothes because the pelican cases packed with guns cover the closet floors… I don’t even know where those keys are…but that’s for another day.
Today, it’s the shoes.
I look at the back of those beloved low top hiking boots. The ones that you wore everyday. The loops at the back, twisted from where your finger would hook through the loop and pull them on (without loosening the laces). If you kicked anything too hard, they’d fly off. But that was your everyday style. Laid back , unhurried, more exuberant than controlled. I see those loops and I can see your body moving as you lower one side and then the other, while slipping them on quickly. Lord knows we have somewhere to be… or at least you have a project on your mind. Maybe you’re wearing shorts or even pants today… but the socks. They will be army green or black crew cut. Army and Ranger issued. Wool. Proper hiking socks.
You will pull them tight, halfway up your calves (very well formed may I just say) and you will be set. Shoes, socks, something on the bottom half, but if there is even a hint of the sun, you can forget the shirt…
I see those shoes and I see you so clearly. And so the shoes are what will often wreck me. Reminding me that this beautiful, phantom of a memory is no longer here.
Today as I gazed up at those well used shoes, I wondered if I had imagined the last 7 years. Because the pain of connecting YOU with the profound reality of YOU gone… well I don’t know how a person bears pain like that. So maybe my imagination dreamed you up like you were never really here… Except those shoes. There’s too much evidence to your existence and so the sting of the knife that is losing you cuts a little deeper and I feel it a little more because I see. I see that you are gone. This beautiful imagining was real and then it just disappeared. I see the back of you, as you walk away from me. Too far ahead. Like the picture I took in Korea… you are wearing those shoes. I take the shoe down, look at the tread, and even take a whiff. Looking for you, like a lost and broken thing. You would laugh at me and remind me that you are not there but this is all that I seem to have sometimes of you. It is all a series of precious things that once held no significance really. Just shoes but, dear God, it is are the shoes for me.
Loading comments...