These Shoes

Even though you can’t control how you feel, you can manage how you react to those feelings. Instead of trying to ignore them or stuff them deeper inside, force them to identify themselves and let them know that you’re in charge.

Daphne Gray-Grant's writing tip, above, also applies to life itself. 

I had to go write it down.

I write down a lot of things I already know, because I need reminders. 

Then there are reminders I perhaps don't need.

These runners, kept at the bottom of the basement steps so that I won't track any alkaline dust around the floor when I return upstairs, remind me of a death that still pains me. I feel it every time I slip these shoes on; there is that moment of remembering.

I had gone to Shelly's to be with her for a week or two after Dale's passing, and one day her daughters invited us for a river-floating afternoon. I needed throw-away shoes to wear in the water and mud, and purchased these for $15.

We gals had a lovely day on the Pembina River. That, I like to be reminded of. Dale, I also like to remember. What happened to Dale, what Dale did — no.

Maybe it is time to get rid of these shoes.