Your Shoes

We aren’t the only ones missing you, Matt. Your shoes are too! They no longer can go to all the routine as well as the special places you used to go. And, for sure, no one else can fill your shoes! So, we have them here as a sort of picture of the emptiness we feel.

Can I even remember all the different jobs you had? Maybe your shoes can help me some. I don’t think I can get the sequence right, but I’ll try. Of course you worked for me since you were big enough to stick fertilizer signs in the yards and do flyers door to door. But in more recent years TML employed you many different times; on one of the mowing teams, doing landscape projects and snow removal. You were a cashier at Janson’s drive-in and did a lot of ladder climbing for Galbraith’s Window & Gutter Cleaning. I think you did busing/waiting for three different restaurants. You were doing concrete work for quite a while with that company in Cicero. Didn’t you work two different times for Barraco’s? and a spell delivering for Jimmy John’s. Your last main job was working with your friend doing new house construction. Matt, I was always proud of your hard work. You learned fast on all your jobs and were a dependable employee. Oh, I forgot, parking lot detail at Menard’s.

What else do we have here? ...shoes for baseball, running, working out with your life long friend Andrew, and your chill time flip flops. I think the purple ones must have been your go to shoes when you wanted to dress to impress. Black Oxfords? I think I can name every time you wore them; your prom and graduation, Grandma’s funeral, Rachel and Israel’s wedding, Caitlin and Rich’s wedding and Grandpa’s funeral.

That’s the short version of what they would say... if these shoes could talk. One thing they all have in common is they were all left behind. The fact is, you were barefoot when you left. Because, you weren’t planning on going anywhere.

Missing you so much, Matt!