Just a Pair of Shoes

Several months ago, I lost my friend. My best friend, really. But lost isn't exactly the right term - it wasn't a matter of location; we are both, in fact, in the very same places. I wish that it was simply a geographic obstacle - that makes it not ours to overcome, but we then become simply victim to circumstances, to things that aren't quite in our control.

We are many things, but I don't know that either of us qualify as victims. In our own ways, and to varying degrees, we each contributed. Everything became broken and twisted - unrecognizable when compared to what we used to be. And so our last act of us, of being so connected and intertwined that words aren't needed, was to walk away.

That was months ago, and I haven't really given things much thought. Which isn't to say that walking away was as easy as changing my socks, it was anything but easy. But it wasn't something that I dwelled on, or really even thought about at all.

Until yesterday.

The person who was crossing the street in front of me had on a pair of shoes. Which is quite common, and really, expected. When you're out on the street, you wear shoes. And in the middle of the street, I realized. Those shoes were the same shoes I had seen every day for years - the shoes that my best friend wore every day.

And I was stunned. In all of my life, I had only seen those shoes on one set of feet. Which, in all honesty, was probably because they are kind of ugly shoes. But ugly or not, they graced the feet of my best friend, and were as familiar to me as breathing - even if the realization of who they belonged to in my mind brought a flood of memories that stopped me dead in my tracks, if only for an instant.

And so in the honor of friendships and memories, this is my best shot from last week.

Sometimes it's just a pair of shoes.
And sometimes it's years worth of memories, packaged up to look like shoes.

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