I finally picked up Grant’s clothes from the mortuary. I had wanted them immediately, just to see if there was anything left of the essence of his life on the clothes he died in.  The plastic cleaners bag told me, they didn’t give them to me till they’d been dry cleaned.  DAMN!  I had wanted them dirty.

 The clothes still had the stains on them, the type that the cleaners don’t get out.  It was blood.  I didn’t care.  I wanted to see the reality.  Not washed.  I was irritated, but do I yell at the mortuary for washing clothes?  I hung them in the closet, still in the cleaners plastic. I had no reason to take them out. I haven’t touched them.

The mortuary also gave me Grant’s shoes and for some reason that surprised me. The shoes weren’t washed though. They were just as they were. They were ripped badly in the crease where the toe joints go. They must have ripped when he landed so hard. The impact ripped his shoes. They didn’t look like that as he walked out of the house. I remembered that. 

I looked at the rip in those shoes for a long time. Running my fingers over the frayed material. Imagining the impact that ripped it. Then I got up and carefully placed the shoes, Grant’s shoes, in my closet. I put them right next to my running shoes.  I look at them every day. 

 Every time I grab my shoes for my run, I see Grant’s shoes. They remind me of that impact that killed him, the evidence of that fatal crash in the torn seams of the top of the shoes. The tears torn from what wouldn’t be there through natural wear. 

The shoes remind me. These are the shoes that covered his feet the last day he walked this earth. 

They remind me to love my children and live this day so that if it were my last I’d be satisfied with how I did today.  We don’t know which day will be our last day walking on this earth. 

Those shoes remind me to be real. To be seen.  To feel.  To use my body to move.  And not to be afraid anymore.  I keep them to keep me going, and to remember to walk forward, powerfully.