The Shoes August 9, 2022

I put my shoes on for a workout class that morning.  Did the class, ran my errands, and dropped some meat off to my mom.  When I got home, I hadn’t even had time to take off my shoes before the pager went off.  Oh yay, I thought, saves me time getting out the door.  I didn’t know the shoes were taking me to Grandma.

When time stands still, it’s not on pause.  It’s in an alternate dimension where the people in that moment are in fast-forward and no one else can keep up.  Time stands still when there aren’t other first responders yet.  There’s not an ambulance yet.  How can I do “all the things” without “all the equipment”?  There’s questions being hollered and it’s not for days later that the bigger question is what tone I used.  I didn’t mean to sound accusatory, I just needed to know how fast.  I’m usually on the other side, knowing how fast I got an ambulance out the door and how fast I crossed town, and knowing there are situations where nothing is fast enough.  Situations where every statistic is against us.  Situations where it doesn’t matter that the best people providing the best care got there as fast as possible and couldn’t win.  Grandma’s situation.

The shoes carried me through the ER that day, where people came from everywhere to offer what they could and the doctor had terrible bedside manner.  Just be done talking to me.  The shoes met Aunt Susie in the hallway, prayed over Grandma with Pastor Tim, and witnessed tears from people who hurt so much for us.  And I guarantee I left those shoes at home that night when I chose to go the fire department meeting instead of stay in the silence of home, because there’s therapy and healing to be surrounded by people—some who were on the scene, some who knew Grandma, and some who pulled me in for a hug knowing I’m not a hugger.  I guarantee it was a few weeks before those were the shoes I picked for the gym.

I wore those shoes this morning.  Went to the same 8:15 am class as that Tuesday morning a year ago, and then went for errands.  But I skipped stopping by the butcher shop and treated myself to a coffee and visited with a friend instead.  I relive that day, and I think about those shoes every time I slip them on.  Grandma’s memory lives on in all the big ways and the small ways, her spirit alive in so many of us when we’re picking from the garden, baking, or pulling one of her dishes from the cabinet.  We aren’t healed from her leaving us.  But we still feel her love.