Before Pt. 2- A Bit About the Shoes

Those shoes.

Those grey leather Converse high-top shoes.  I called them his "cutie boy" shoes (a description that he told me last Thanksgiving he preferred if I kept a private one.) But he was just so dang cute in those shoes. It melted me. Every time. To see him in those shoes.

I've always liked Converse shoes. I left my pink ones at home, brought my silver glitter ones back to Korea last summer, and bought a pair of maroon ones here. I've also found grown men wearing Converse shoes to be both attractive and boyish. Artsy and adorable. I can be thrown by the shoes the way some men are thrown by a homely girl with a particularly impressive figure. Some are blindsided by boobs. I can be blindsided by a pair of worn Converse high tops.

After I mentioned this once, early on in our dating, Gareth became dear I say obsessed with finding a pair. The right pair. He wanted to be handsome for his sweetheart (words he actually used) which was funny, because I would have found Gareth handsome in flip-flops covered in mud. He found out that one can custom design a pair of Converse on line, and the emails and links to his different late-night and mid-day Converse creations began arriving by the dozens. We had fun talking about them in the same way he enjoyed talking about watches.

He almost seemed to like laboring over which pair to get. It gave him a project. Something to weigh anytime he chose to think about it. He liked this. He had nearly settled on a pair of brown and dark green leather ones- stitching, lining, toe and heel color, laces- all customized- when we stumbled upon a grey leather pair at the EMart in Jinju during an afternoon there. He was delighted. Torn. (But what about the customized ones?) He tried them on. He walked around the shoe area, debating both out loud and to himself different selling points. I left to do other shopping and when I came back, he was still at it. If you've ever shopped with Gareth, you know exactly what I mean.

I did a lot of encouraging in this way "Whatever ones make you happy! Yes- I do love the grey. Yes, it's true. You can wear those with ______." (He had pointed out all of the grey clothing he had an other shirts/sweaters which would look nice with grey). It was adorable, really, to see him work through this, and even more endearing to see him so full of joy as he wore the shoes out of the store. "I've never had a pair of these!" he exclaimed. "Why have I never had a pair of these?!"

Whenever we went out on a date-date, he'd almost always show up in those shoes. "I'm wearing the shoes!" he'd say. He'd tap his feet like Dorothy and hold out his arms. I'd become giddy and he loved that. He loved to dial up the Bridget giddy-meter. It wasn't hard to do.

Those shoes, those grey Converse shoes, were worn while strolling around Anapji Pond, the ancient buildings lit up at night. They were worn as we walked hand in hand on the streets of Hadong in the spring, when cherry blossom petals made a carpet of pale pink beneath our feet. They climbed steps to the observatory in the hills overlooking our small town- a place where he would steal long kisses on moonlit nights. They were laced on the elevator in a hurried fashion when we were late to meet friends or make a scheduled movie time. Those shoes were tossed countless times in the doorway of my apartment, taken back to Gyeongju on a Sunday night and back again on a Thursday.

Those shoes. Those shoes. Those shoes.

Those shoes sat in the trunk of my car for weeks after Gareth died. They had been handed to me by the attendant at the morgue, as we walked into the room to see Gareth's body for the last time, in the outfit we had just dropped off. I won't forget the image of that man standing there, arms held out straight, and Gareth's shoes being held by both hands- a respectful way to give something to another person in Korean culture. Use both hands. I took them with both hands and wondered why they were being given to me. I think I know why, but I don't like to think about it.

In any case, there they were. In the trunk of my white Avante, next to the jumper cables and yoga mat and school slippers from my last teaching job and Chocopie box that I'd meant to throw out ages ago. There they were, and I wasn't sure what to do with them.

"Why don't you give them to someone? Or donate them? There are used clothes places there, right?" A good thought, and after Gareth's family and I selected a few of his items of clothes to take home (all caps, a wool sweater, the grey jacket I bought him last year, and a t-shirt went home to New Zealand and 3 t-shirts- one that smelled the most of him and two others that I saw him in the most went home with me), we left the rest at his apartment to be donated. My stomach drops a bit when I imagine someone else wearing that rust-colored sweater that I bought for him on our first Christmas together. But it's out there somewhere. Being worn. And hopefully being enjoyed by someone. I left it behind.

But the shoes. Those shoes. It felt like a crime almost to have them on the feet of anyone else. A worse thought was throwing them away. So they stayed in the trunk until I knew what to do with them.

I can't remember the first person who suggested the shoes be buried somewhere here. Or perhaps they suggested them to be burned. Either way, it was the idea of ritual. Of ceremony. Of what seems to soften the pain after someone dies- gathering together and remembering the person. Watching the coffin get lowered or the ashes spread or simply gathering and then not. We look for closure even when we may not quite be ready to accept it.

Gareth's friends and family in New Zealand had what I'm told was a beautiful service, no doubt some small bit of comfort to those there who were shocked and mourning the loss of him so greatly. Here in Korea, Gareth's theater family gathered and remembered him in their way. Shared memories. Shared sadness. A room of people who don't understand how this possibly could have happened but understand each other. Gareth's university family gathered while his parents and brother were still in the country and remembered him as a co-worker, a planner, a friend.

And so it was that Gareth's "Hadong family"- those people who welcomed him back into the country when he arrived in the spring of 2012 and grew to be like family to both of us after we met there in August of that same year, gathered together to bury the shoes and remember Gareth Lochhead. I was craving ritual. I was craving togetherness. And I was open to some closure, no matter how small a piece it would be.