Final Blog Post: White Shoes
I used to love the feel of the sand between my toes, the sun-warmed granules depressing ever-so-slightly under my weight. I would stand at the exact point where the waves severed the beach in two, one half untouched by careless footsteps, the other littered with them. I would stand in one spot letting the water lick at my toes, slowly sinking as the granules were ripped out from under me as the ocean receded. But now that same sand was too rough to stand upon in contentment. Too rough from being grated daily. Too rough from being the sponge to spilt drinks and sunscreen.
I stood in that same spot today—a few feet from the boulder, just far enough away from the chaos—as I have always done. I continually hoped that the feeling beneath my feet would emulate what it felt like only a few months ago, but it never did. Day after day, I would inch closer to the water’s edge, hoping that the farther I got from the side that was too far gone would change the sand upon which I stood. But it only ever felt the same, just a little more wet. It was the ocean’s feeble attempt to take away the scars that lie much deeper than the surface.
I closed my eyes for a brief moment, trying to block out the chaos around me. I tried to focus on the rhythmic break of the waves, tried to summon the feeling of bliss that I once felt standing in this exact spot. But I could not. This spot will forever only be a tainted remnant of what it once was. I bowed my head and opened my eyes. Rolling in the waves just to my right was a plastic bucket, the synthetic rattle of plastic marring the natural crash of water on land. It was the discarded tool of the kids digging a hole twenty yards down the beach. They were so excited when they hit water as they dug deeper, screaming as the liquid gushed into the beach’s wound. As I stared down the vast expanse of sand, all I could see was the pock-marked surface, like the sustained hits of mortar shells.
I turned away and began to walk back toward the resort hotel, letting the water wash away any trace that I was even there. My shoes hung limply in my hand, laces dangling dangerously close to the ground, the pristine white fabric only ever having touched this sand once. On that day, I returned to my shift after spending my break on the beach standing in my spot, removing my shoes only at the water line. Small bits of sand clung to the fabric when I returned, the fabric only minutely discolored from the sand dampened by the afternoon rain. I got a verbal warning for that, and my shoes never touched the sand again. I was told I could not represent the resort looking as though I spend my days in the sand. I always thought that was a stupid rule as shoes were meant to get dirty, but one I must follow nonetheless.
At the resort, we always provide our guests with newspapers, some from the States and some local. I always see a few local ones floating around, mostly at breakfast when guests have a hard time breaking the habituality of a cup of coffee and the morning paper. They grab a local copy as a sense of obligation to understand local news overtakes them. As I walked back to the resort hotel, I did not expect a local edition to be lying in the sand next to a blue lounge chair, anchored to the beach by a small dusting of sand. It was obviously long forgotten, the remnant of an obligatory breakfast perusal. The pages were haphazardly folded over to reveal the obituary section. Staring back at me from the black-and-white page was a face I recognized, a face weathered with age and experience and hardship, though beaming in contentment. I had only known this man for a very brief time, having met him as I walked home from the resort one evening. But I will never be able to forget what he told me that night, and as I looked down at the page and read the brief statement about this man’s life, I felt as though I had just lost a dear friend, the man on the park bench.
I remember it being an incredibly hot evening, the afternoon rain trapping the high temperatures in the humid environment. The clouds had long cleared, leaving the sky in a magnificent pink and orange hue as the sun crept closer to the horizon. I listened to the soft crash of the waves on the sand as I began to walk home after a long shift at the resort. I tried to ignore the irritating ache in my feet as they protested with each new step. I concentrated on the sound of the waves, letting the relaxing rhythm clear my mind of the day’s work.
The road was still littered with small puddles from the day’s rain, and I carefully maneuvered around each to avoid getting any muck on my white shoes that I would have to wash away later. But as the lace on my right foot began to unravel without my notice, I would end up having to wash these shoes before tomorrow anyway as the laces slithered across the ground behind me. I walked a few more steps to the park bench just ahead and on the other side of the street, and sat down to tie my shoe.
I examined the lace, hoping that the mud would come out easily, when I heard a voice next to me. “I remember when they built that place,” he said, gesturing to the resort across the road.
He was an older gentleman, most likely on the edge of seventy and eighty. His face was weathered with age, deep creases highlighting his features. His voice was low and a bit gravely, some of the words of that sentence lacking appropriate enunciation. With just a mere glance, one could tell that this man lived a harrowing life. His eyes were locked in a perpetual state of fatigue, and his shoulders slumped ever-so-slightly as if defeated by hardship. But that seemed an unshakable façade as I looked at the man and tried to process what he said, for the way he looked into the fading light told a different story altogether.
“It must have been thirty or so years ago by now, but I remember it like it was yesterday.” I quickly finished tying my shoe, forgetting completely about the mud on the lace. For some reason, I felt as though I needed to hear what this man had to say. “I used to be able to come sit on this bench every day before going home after work and watch the sun slip lower and lower down the horizon. I could watch the waves become capped in white as they broke over the sand. It was a breathtaking sight, probably why they chose to build it here. It was funny watching the hotel go up. At first there were trees blocking a perfect view, but that was how I liked it, seeing the trees sway in the breeze and having to search a little to catch a glimpse of the ocean. When they came in, they cut down the trees and it was no longer difficult to see the ocean. Then the foundation went down, and I had to look at the water over a sheet of concrete that made the ocean feel man-made as well. But it was when the skeleton started going up that I knew I could never look at the ocean again. The interior infrastructure rose so high out of the ground, it was like the bars of a prison cell where being placed to capture the ocean. And when the outside went up, it was like the water was moved to solitary confinement—no one could ever see it again without special permission.”
The man paused to take a few breaths and stared at the resort, at the point where he would be able to catch a glimpse of the water if the building was not there. I looked too, wondering what that sight would have been like, but I’ve only ever known the hotel in that spot. My earliest memory of life is inside those walls. Mama was pushing a housekeeping cart down the long corridor of guest rooms. I followed behind her, watching her white shoes carry her farther down the hall.
“My house used to sit right there.” He pointed to the east wing of the hotel. “It wasn’t a big place, or even nice for that matter, but it was the place where I lived with my family, where I watched my son grow up…for however briefly. It was home.
“I bought it just a few weeks after my wife and I married. We had no money then, and could not afford anything else. I told her I would fix it up just the way both of us would like it. The first night we were there, the roof leaked like a sieve.” He chuckled at a memory that I would never understand. “I patched it the very next day. Then I moved on to other projects, and, before we knew it, we had a home that we both loved, a home that we created out a nothing. We painted the walls blue because it was like bringing the ocean that was just outside our window into our home so we could enjoy it always. I will always remember the way that blue got just a little brighter when my wife would set a vase of purple orchids in the center of the table.
“We had been in that house for a year when we had our son. We set up his crib in the room with the best view of the ocean, the sound of the waves always seeming to lull him to sleep, even on nights when he was the most fussy. He grew into a young man on that beach over there.” He gestured toward the resort again. “That was where he took his first steps. That was where he said his first words. That was where I took him when he was in so much pain he could do nothing else.”
He paused again. The memory too much to bear. But he soon continued, voice gruff, and sentences clipped as though he did not want to say what he was about to tell me next. “He was diagnosed with leukemia when he turned twelve. It was in the advanced stages when it was found. He died just after is thirteenth birthday.”
He stared at the spot where the ocean should be. I wanted to comfort him, say something to ease the pain that years could not erase. But I could not. There was nothing I could say that this man had not already heard probably a thousand times over. Letting him reflect in the silence as his eyes bore into the darkened hotel was the best I could do.
“We never had any more kids after we lost him. For months, my wife would sit on that beach every day and just stare out into the ocean. On the days that I was not working, I would join her. We would sit in silence as we listened to the waves crash. On the days that I was working, I would stop at this bench before going home.
“We were drowning in medical bills when the people with the resort came to offer us money for the house and land. It seemed a god-send at that time, it was enough to get us close to paying those off. …I should have never taken that money.”
Daylight was almost completely gone. I could no longer make out he features of the man’s face now obscured in shadow. Every time he stopped speaking, the night air was left pregnant with sounds of the nature surrounding us.
“We moved a ways up the road, close enough so we could still walk to this spot. It was still our home regardless of what was here. I walked here every day after work and sat on this bench—even though it was out of the way—watching the building go up. The hardest day was watching our house come crashing down…. Some days, my wife would come with me. We would sit together as our memories were built over. We would still come here even after the resort was finished, telling stories of our favorite moments in that house. The story of the leaking roof came up a lot.” He smiled as he thought back. I couldn’t help but smile too, his face so telling of the joy he felt in his reverie.
“I even brought her here when she could no longer remember who I was. She had early on-set Alzheimer’s at a very young age. Some days we could sit on this bench and it would be just like it always was—stories of leaking rooves, and purple flowers, and walking through the soft white sands as dusk fell over the beach. Some days she could hear the waves breaking on the sand, and a knowing would flood her face. She would look at me and smile, and I knew I had her back for a brief time. Some days we would come here and no memories would come. …I miss her every single day. I miss my son. I miss my home.”
The man inhaled sharply before he continued, “But I feel like the luckiest man alive to have lived the life that I have. It has been hard, but I would never trade it for the world.”
I didn’t realize I had tears running out of the corners of my eyes until he stopped talking.
The old man slowly rose from the bench and began to shuffle down the street. I watched as he walked away, shrinking into the shadows cast by the sun just peaking over the horizon. I looked back over at the resort—a daunting building made of concrete and brick. As darkness washed over the façade, what was once the epicenter of my life now became a foreboding structure capable of robbing life.
I wore my white shoes to the funeral that day. I didn’t care that the softly falling rain was slowly turning the streets into a minefield of deceptively deep puddles. I didn’t care that when I began my shift, my shoes would have a rim of mud marring the sterility. I didn’t care that my day would begin with a verbal warning about not adhering to strict uniform policies. Something as mundane as the cleanliness of a shoe should never matter in the grand scheme of things. Many things in this world mean so much more than worrying about pleasing those around you, living up to expectations that you never had the desire to fulfil in the first place. I never thought about that until I sat down on a park bench to tie those white shoes, and never realized that I was doing just that until I read an obituary.
The rain grew heavier as I got closer to the cemetery, as if the sky was shedding tears for the beautiful life lost. I placed my hand over the delicate petals of the orchid I had brought for him, protecting it from the weather. I knew that the ceremonies would be long done by the time I got there, my lateness intentional. I had only ever met this man once in my life for only a brief time. I didn’t even know his name. But I could not let his soul leave this Earth without his knowing what that story meant to me, how it changed my life for the better. He, in that moment, probably did not understand what an impact he was making, I was simply a person who happened to sit on the same bench, ears open and receptive to a story that he needed to tell. But, then again, maybe he did know. Maybe he sensed that I needed to hear that story at that time in my life. I will never know what his intentions were that day, but, regardless, I needed to say goodbye to the man on the park bench.
I walked through the cemetery gates onto the dirt path, now a muddy mess, my white shoes losing their monochromacy with every step. I wasn’t sure where he was buried, but kept walking as if being draw to a specific place. I rounded a corner as the path made a sharp left turn around a lush green tree, and there, just a few yards farther was a freshly dug grave, headstone resting by the churned soil. Chairs were still placed by the site, abandoned by the mourners, collecting rain water in the contoured seat. It seems a sad sight, but the final day of the Nine Nights celebration has a happy ending—the beautiful soul that graced this world is now making his way into the heavens, to join his wife and son.
I hung back as I watched a young girl place a flower on his grave, presumably a family member who needed a little more time in solitude to say goodbye. She placed her hand on the headstone, sitting ever so still as she captured every possible moment she could. She did not acknowledge the rain, growing heavier by the minute. She simply sat there letting the water fall around her. The cemetery was completely silent save the rain, a sound so perfect in its natural beauty. I waited, drenched from head to toe, muddy water seeping through the fabric of my no-longer-white shoes. When the girl slowly stood and walked away into the downpour, I made my way to his grave site.
I knelt in the mud by his headstone and gently placed the orchid at its base, the purple petals in stark contrast to the dark soil. I slowly raised my hand to the engraved epitaph and traced each letter with my fingers, wondering how the remembrance of a life can be condensed into so few words. I had only known this man for less than an hour, but I felt like I knew him, he felt like a friend I had known for my entire life. His words changed me that day, and will forever be present in my life, for which I am eternally grateful. I traced the man’s name last, a name that I regretfully only learned after his passing. He never needed a name to mean something to me, he could simply be “the man on the park bench.” I feel like I am just officially meeting him now, and cannot bring myself to say goodbye. The finality of that saying forces me to let go of someone and something I am not ready to part with. Instead, as I trace the letters of his name one last time, I say the only thing that can punctuate the story that he told me only a few months ago.
