The SHoes.

Twenty years ago roughly when I moved to Australia I had to attend some wedding or some such style of a thing and I was wearing shoes. As you do.

I always had this pair shining black polished to the very max of polishment. They held meaning.

My mother in law commented on them and I said yes these are the shoes I'll wear to my Father's funeral. She laughed in disbelief. Sure you're father is alright isn't he? He is ya.

I'd already had them for eight years by then and was fully conciousness of why they lived in my wardrobe year after year.

They were going to be on my feet as I helped carry my Father's coffin. One day.

There's an old story of a man who liked a few pints on a Friday night after work but he hated walking home. Half way home on his way out of town he had to walk around the cemetery, a walk which took 50 minutes.

He was terrified of the cemetery at night but in the daylight he could walk fearlessly through to the safety of home, a shortcut that made his trip only twenty minutes long. It was freezing.

But the tall gates were locked at night and the walls were very high. He stood looking up at the huge gates looming over him and he wished he wasn't scared of the undead. But he was. He was terrified.

Anyway, his friend walked by and saw him standing looking and he asked him what was up and got the full explanation.

"Give me your cap" he said to his frightened mate.

Our lad handed him the cap, a brand new expensive one and he promptly frisbeed it fifty yards over the gate onto the grass beyond.

" Why did you do that?!" Yer man asked.

"Look, you want that hat more than you want to be afraid and by the time you've climbed the gate to get it sure you might as well keep running and you'll be beside your fire drinking tea before you know what's what"

Safe.

When she heard my father had died my mother in law asked if I had the shoes polished. I had.

After the funeral I called into the little church in Knockcroghery where my grandparents had sponsored a stain glass window. Real people that left so much good in their wake. Loved.

I left the shoes there as a symbol to myself that there had come an end. Finally.