Time wounds every heel

It’s been a year now since my stepdad died. Even though he was in a coma for a few weeks and didn’t technically take his ticket to paradise until later, the day he died to me was the day he had his heart attack, my 22^nd birthday. Sometimes I still can’t believe he’s gone. I think about all the things he’s missed – my brother’s high school graduation, my wedding, the Steelers winning the super bowl…I just wish he could have stuck around for one more year.

I’ve lost people that I love before, but it’s never been as sudden as it was that day. I think when someone leaves and it’s so unexpected, you spend the first few months just grappling with the fact that they’re not there anymore. You have to get used to not seeing them in their usual places, not hearing their voice. It just doesn’t make any sense. But eventually, the awkwardness of their absence fades, and you start building a new life without them. You move on to a sort of remembrance stage, I guess you could call it. We always talk about what Dave would have said in a certain situation or reminisce about the funny things he did. It’s like you can somehow get past the denying that they’re gone by turning them into a figment of your imagination, telling stories about them like they’re a favorite character from a movie or a book.

But then there are his shoes. When I go to my mom’s house, I see his shoes still sitting underneath his desk where he last slipped them off. Those all white, orthopedic-looking Reeboks that he always wore. And that’s when it hits me. He was real. He was there at that desk the night before he died, sending me a birthday email, and not knowing how much things were going to change. He was there, and now he is gone forever. His shoes are a painful reminder of the living, breathing person that is now reduced to a few ashes in an urn. Sometimes I don’t want to look at the shoes when I go, but I have to. Because deep down, I don’t want to forget. Remembering is pain, but maybe it’s the only way to really keep someone alive.