He watched as the coffin was laid to rest in its hole. He heard muffled sobs around him, but that’s just it. They were muffled, dimmed in a way, by the heavy weight of this loss. He glanced down at his sneakers, the untied shoelaces sprawled across the carpet. Then, he looked ‘round at everyone else’s shoes. They had all donned their most appropriate heels and church shoes. It was almost mocking for half of his town to dress their best for a long dead individual. A celebration of life, his mom had called the funeral. Still, to him it seemed pointless to call it a celebration if all people will do is cry. Crying was another pointless emotion. For him, it had been replaced by the ever undistinguishable feeling of numbness, which overtook his body at times. Times like these, when he was so numb to the world around him that he couldn’t even tie his shoelaces.