In Her Shoes

When Dad died in July 2021 I told Mom there was no rush to go through his things, that we could take our time. That worked for Mom, for my sister Meg and for me and when we felt ready (enough) we started the process of determining what we wanted to keep and what we would donate.

I gave myself the same advice after Mom died in July of this year. However, the only caveat to that was this time we had to vacate/clean out her apartment within 30 days. So we did force ourselves to make decisions early on about what do with some big things, such as furniture.

Since then I’ve been using one of Mom’s favorite bits of advice, “The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.”

Every weekend, when I and/or my family and I can prioritize some time, I/we choose a category of Mom’s things to work through. Yesterday it was her shoes, in part because I realized I need some new shoes to wear to work and wanted to see if any of Mom’s might be a good fit for me.

Mom and I had the same shoe size. So, in theory any and all of her shoes might have fit me. That said, our feet were not the same shape. It seems Mom’s toes were narrower than mine, something I am not sure if I ever noticed, and thus many of her shoes were too tight in the front. I was able to find a few pairs I liked and that fit, which was meaningful and bittersweet.

Towards the end of Mom’s life her feet were often swollen and thus she started wearing bigger and/or wider shoes. Because of Mom’s Parkinson’s disease and other health conditions/challenges, in the last years of her life when we were together I often helped Mom to get her shoes on and off.

For those who have found themselves in a care giving/partnering role with an aging parent, this reversal feels surreal at times. Mom was always very gracious and I was glad to be able to be do that for/with her.

There was one pair of shoes in particular that Mom wore most of the time in the last months of her life, pictured here, they were especially bittersweet for me to try on, as I had tied and unlaced them on and off Mom so many times. As I slipped my feet in her shoes and laced them up, the memories rushed in from when we were together and I was helping Mom by gently finagling each foot, adjusting her socks and then tying them up (with one knot, as she preferred).

Mom’s sneakers didn’t fit/were big on me, which may’ve been a good thing, as it might be too hard for me to keep and wear them. There are some things that belonged to Mom, that I have chosen to hold on to, including a favorite top of hers that I helped to pick out and is too small for me to wear (Mom wore petite, so even when we wore the same sizes over the years, her petite versions rarely worked for me). That top hangs in my closet and makes me smile and think of Mom when I see it.

That said, I opted not to keep Mom’s last pair of walking shoes, which I know is okay. As I shared in the eulogy I gave at Mom’s funeral, she loved to power walk for much of her adult life. Mom did so often with dear friends in and around our neighborhood three mornings every week and when Mom and I we’re together, before Parkinson’s really took over her body, we often went for walks together around Evanston, Beverly/Chicago and/or Hilton Head Island (when on one of our family vacations there).

For Mom’s wake, one of the photo boards we made in her honor and memory had a waking theme and we found/shared many photos of Mom walking with loved ones both for fun and to raise money for meaningful causes including the Beverly Breast Cancer Walk many Mother’s Day mornings and the National Parkinson’s Foundation’s Moving Day Chicago walk, which our family participated in together in 2017, 2018 and 2019, before the pandemic hit and we took a break.

This Sunday Bob, Sean, Gail and I will be walking in Mom’s honor and memory, as well as her dad’s/my Grandpa Jack’s and our cousin Kathy’s husband Kent’s, as they also had Parkinson’s when they died. It will be bittersweet to participate for the first time without Mom and Dad there. It’s sometimes hard for me to believe that four years ago, the last time we did this as Team “Journey with Jacquie,” that Mom, who used a rollator the last two years of her life and a wheel chair in the last few weeks of her life, was still able to power walk.

It’s cliche when someone dies how we talk about them having big shoes to fill. Mom’s actual shoes weren’t very big and I get it. I am doing my best, in these early months since her death, to figure out and stumble through what it means to be part of a family whose oldest immediate members have both died, which includes helping to arrange/host family gatherings and holiday celebrations. Not having three generations anymore on my “side” of our family is hard.

I remember when my maternal Grandma Dee died in February 2000 and my paternal Grandma Mite died in May 2000, before Bob and I got married that September, being struck by a similar reality. It felt very strange until our oldest child, Sean, was born in October 2003 and we returned to having three generations again. Judging by where my sister and my offspring are at in their lives, I imagine it will be more than a few years before a new generation might join our Axe family.

When I felt the urge this morning to write about my experience going through Mom’s shoes yesterday, I thought it might be a short one. I intended to focus on the bittersweet experience of sorting through the belongings of a loved one who has died. However, as often happens when I begin writing, the words started flowing and took me in a meaningful direction that I didn’t anticipate. I appreciate that it I was able to tie together (pun intended) this milestone with how important walking was to Mom on her journey and how many miles she covered in her wonderful lifetime with her loved ones, including me, as we well as how it feels to try to fill someone’s shoes.

It is was a great honor and privilege to be my mother/Jacquie’s daughter, as well as one of her close friends. Though navigating this new reality, in which Mom is dead, continues to be difficult and painful at times, allowing myself to feel how I feel helps me to find meaning, as I integrate what was then and what is now.