char *(null)=" grandpas.shoes

grandpas.shoes

This is a true story according to Jo Anne C.Heen
 
My stepmother tells this tale.
   "My grandparents on my father's side argued constantly. Grandma was a
bossy lady who liked to have her own way, and no matter what Grandpa
did, he couldn't please her. As they got older, he started to say, after
every battle, 'When I die, I'm going to come back and haunt you.'
   "The night he died, my grandmother phoned me to ask whether I would
make all of the funeral arrangements. I agreed. One of the things I had
to do was choose the clothes he would be buried in.
   "My grandfather was a very neat man. Everything he owned had its
place, and woe to the person who moved anything. Whenever we kids played
at their house, we were always careful not to go near his closet and
disturb his shoes, which were lined up neatly: the brown Sunday best
shoes, then his'going-out shoes,' then his work shoes, and so on.
   "When I picked out his funeral clothes, I debated which pair of shoes
to take. I asked my grandmother, who told me to take the brown
Sunday-best pair. Then she told me to throw the rest of his shoes away
because no one in our family wore his size. I did as I was told.
   "A few years later, when my grandmother died, I had the sad task of
cleaning out her house. My mother warned me that I should go in the
daytime, as Grandma always complained that Grandpa had come back to
haunt her.
   "She never slept well at night in that house after he died, you know,
Mother told me. 'She said that he walked around at night, keeping her
awake, so she took to sleeping during the day.' As we both chuckled, my
daughter, who was six at the time, said, 'I didn't like staying at
Grandma's. People were always walking around in that house.' I explained
to her that old houses creak as they settle, or when the wind blows, but
I made sure it was bright daylight when I went over there.
   "I spent the morning cleaning the downstairs, planning to tackle the
bedrooms after lunch.
   "When I opened the door to my Grandfather's closet, there hung his
suits, covered with dust. And there on the floor, in the same spot where
they had sat for years, were Grandpa's brown Sunday-best shoes. The ones
he was buried in. Covered with mud and green mold, the shoes were still
wet, as if the owner had kicked them off only a moment ago. I didn't
wait around to see whether his best suit was there too."
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