I wrote a short article for a class in college in 2015. I was recently going through my laptop looking at old things I had written and I came across this:

"My Grandmother has fifty-eight pairs of shoes. I know because I counted them one day when I was home alone and bored. She has sandals, heels, flats, tennis shoes, boots, and even a pair of bowling shoes that she bought at a yard sale for a dollar. Her excuse: you never know when you might need to go bowling. Every time she goes out she wants to get a new pair of shoes. She only wears three out of the fifty-eight on a daily basis, however, so I’m not sure why she needs so many. She wears her blue fluffy slippers with the hard sole around the house, her black and white tennis shoes with the Velcro straps around in the winter and her pair of brown, pleather Jesus sandals during the summer. She always says when she passes we better get a casket for her that’s big enough to fit her and all of her shoes together comfortably because you can never have too much fashionable footwear when you’re walking and dancing down the streets of gold."

Recently a lot of little things have been reminding me of her. It has been a while since she passed, but the hair salon in Walmart still has the gouge in the wall where she ran the electric shopping cart into it. I went there the other day, and as I was getting my hair done, I thought of her. All those Saturday mornings in the salon, gossiping and getting her hair styled for the next week.

I thought about how I would sneak her Reese's cup when I got home from Walgreens, and we would share the two-pack.

I thought of all the stories she told and the laughter and happiness she brought my life. It seems the world is wanting me to remember her for some reason because I keep coming across bits of her life like the wall gauge or the story about her shoes.

It is now 2017 and not a day goes by where something doesn't make me think of her, even if just fleetingly. I miss her so much, but I will never stop loving her.