Foot Notes.

My take on love, loss, and what I wore. Inspired by a letter to a friend about the loss of a parent.

On this day, two years ago, I signed my offer with my current employer, a shoe company, and began planning my exit from my previous employer. With my new manager at the shoe company imminently going on maternity leave, I didn’t have terribly much time in between bidding adieu to my old gig and starting the new one, but I knew those few days in between the jobs demanded a visit home to my family.

It had been about a year since my father had had a second heart valve surgery that had irrevocably changed him, and throughout that year, the state of his body and mind had undulated unpredictably from lucid and recuperating to barely alive. The last time I’d been home before that visit in February 2019, my father was on the upswing. He still had enough energy to be his brazen, cantankerous self and still had enough energy to lift a fork or spoon to his mouth to feed himself — not to mention he still had an appetite.

When I returned home on February 16, 2019, my father was a shell of the man he used to be. I wrote about it in some depth in this piece a few months after the visit. My father was a man consistently hellbent on career success — his own as well as my own — and before I knew just how sick he’d become, I was excited to tell him about the professional pastures ahead of me. I wanted to let him know that I’d finally gotten the job of my (then-) dreams that would give me meaningful opportunities for career growth, global travel, a salary I…