befabulo.us: It isn't shallow.

This weekend, I sat at the bedside of a dying woman. Lung cancer has worked with merciless swiftness on my neighbor. Hospice has already been called in. She can't get out of bed anymore. I sat at her bedside and wondered just what to say to a friend so close to death.

She wanted to talk about my shoes.

I'd been cleaning the house when my neighbor Al called to say that now would be a good time for us to come over to visit. I quickly changed out of my housecleaning clothes (baggy sweatshirt, a pair of cropped leggings I'd accidentally bought in size large and never got around to donating to charity), fluffed my hair, and put on some makeup and perfume. It makes Al happy to see me in lady-drag -- he always makes appreciative, amusing, only slightly lecherous comments -- so I made the effort to spiff myself up for his sake. He's living a tragedy, and if it'll give him a moment of joy to see me in a V-necked sweater low enough to show a hint of cleavage, then a' cleaving I will go. At my front door, I kicked off my slippers and pondered which pair of shoes to slip on for the short walk across the muddy yard between our home and theirs. My croc-ish cross-strapped Skechers? They're easy to hose the mud off of, but they looked dull next to my black jeans. I put on my Tsubos instead.

Moments later, I was perched on the edge of a futon pulled up close to the hospital bed in my neighbor's front room. I'll admit it -- I'd been nervous before I came over, because in the last two weeks Al had been calling me to vent when his wife was having a bad day, so I had a slightly exaggerated idea of her condition. And despite the fact that I am incontrovertibly a grown-up, I don't have much experience with deathbed visits; the people in my life who have died have either tended to go quite rapidly (car accidents, or my grandmother's sudden collapse) or so very, very gradually (my other grandmother's emphysema) that the change from sick to dying was imperceptible. But she made it easy for me. As soon as I sat down, her eyes locked on to my iridescent purple sneakers. "Ooh, I love your shoes," she cooed, "those are so cool." Her hand slowly reached out toward my toe, and I moved my foot a few inches so she could feel the crackly texture of the leather. While she admired my shoes, I began babbling about how I'd gone a bit nuts when I first started shopping for shoes online, how the UPS guy would always tease me when he delivered yet another box from Endless or Zappos, how I'd been so surprised and delighted when my Tsubos arrived. I'd thought, from the photo, that they were just going to be plain purple, but instead they were metallic, shimmering with shades of purple and blue. "It was like getting a gift," I gushed.

I had no idea, when I first opened that grey Tsubo box, just what a gift it would be, that some day this pair of cool shoes would lighten my heart as I sat with a dying friend. It's not just vanity. It isn't shallow. It's life, a little piece of the beauty and fun of the world, with a massaging footbed. None of us know how many days we have left to walk this earth; we might as well make the most of it, and walk in shoes that make us happy.

Comments

WOW. Very well written and so true.

Posted by: JMH | 11 March 2008 at 12:09 PM

Ow ow ow... now I've got the whole painful throat and nose of not-quite crying. What a lovely story, hon... you make a such a huge difference to so many people, even in the little things.

Posted by: Lynn | 11 March 2008 at 01:02 PM