Please note: this piece contains content that some readers may find upsetting.
The Shoes
It was eight thirty in the morning, I was filling the kettle in my office when my mobile phone rang. It was a pal, telling me they were playing our song as she was driving to work, and she just had to stop and sing along, so should I, and I should dance too, wherever I was. Her voice sounded high, desperate, with Gloria Gaynor belting out, I Will Survive in the background.
'What’s wrong Maggie?'
'I’ve got cancer'. her voice sounded like a child’s.
Tears fell at both ends of the phone, as I heard the details,
'OK I said we can do this; it’ll be a sore time but here we go'.
She was a close friend, who stayed a distance away, but our lives had always intertwined. We knew each other well. I looked up potions and lotions to offset the sickness. I tried to phone at times when I knew it would be difficult, when she would need a friend, not family. I reassured her when she wondered if the girls would be okay, but it was the shoes that got us through the days she was having the cure dripped into her and she was scared.
When they made mistakes and she would text,
'Bloody medical experts, better off with witch doctors!' I would tell her to shout and scream and make a fuss, which she never did. Then one day when her arm was strapped and her movement restricted, she texted me a photograph of her feet and the shoes she was wearing that day. They were like cozy slipper boots, cuddling her feet.
It became our thing. Her shoes became our secret sharing, that told me how she was doing that day. We talked about them as we shared our big and little thoughts about living and dying.
Sometimes her shoes would be a shiny vivid red, and we would vent our anger about a world that allowed this disease to exist. Was it our faults? Were we poisoning the earth with our greed? Who could we blame?
Sometimes they would be white shoes with little blue bows, her feet pale and naked in them like two small bodies. We would reminisce about our youth, our children, when they were young, our fears and hopes for them. We would feel very small in a world made scary by our fears. Then once she showed me black shoes laced up tight, the kind you wore with black clothes, and I was scared to answer her text.
'What’s up?'
She said, 'It's raining. You know Buddhists see existence like an empty cup that is bobbing on the river of life. Then we fill it with our experiences in this life, until it sinks back into the river again, only to bob up empty again ready for the next go. What do you think?'
I was careful when I answered, 'Personally I’d like to be a huge mug, but right now I’m acting like a saucer for your cup, so no spilling over just yet please'.
Death and dying carefully tiptoed around in those clumpy black shoes.
The weeks wore past and the shoes became solid, sturdy, a determined look about them. She wore Doc Martin boots one day and I wondered who she would be kicking, it was mostly everyone. Another day it was high wedge heels very strappy, very sexy. There had been a great looking doctor around the last few weeks on the ward what else could she do to attract some attention?
Then one day instead of her feet, she showed me her arm and I cried at the sore sight of it, she said 'No don’t, it’s just because this is the last one, then the op and then the home stretch'.
'Ok so get your running shoes on then' and she panned down to her feet and there they were, shiny new Adidas all ready for the last lap.
The last photograph she sent showed her feet naked without shoes, exposed and raw looking, as she waited for the final results. Her toenails painted defiantly red with little targets on them, 'scanxiety' a real thing in our stomachs.
When next I saw her, as we hugged our happiness and relief, I looked down and she had on the brightest pair of rainbow-coloured sandals I’ve ever seen. They were luminous and sparkled, not in any way sophisticated or stylish.
Then underneath, painted in multi coloured lettering across both shoes,
'Sole survivors, soul sisters'. She handed me an identical pair and it was time to dance to our song again, and we did.
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