There are many sad sights in this world.
A dog waitin’ for a boy who already got on the school bus.
A grocery buggy with a single limp onion in it.
A preacher who forgot his sermon notes and is tryin’ to fake his way through Revelation.

But none, and I mean none, are quite as mournful as a single, unmatched sock.

I came face to face with one such tragedy not long ago, while I was rummagin’ through the dryer lookin’ for something clean enough to pass as civilized. There it was, sittin’ in the drum like a widow at a graveside, all alone and still warm from the tumblin’. A sad little tube of cotton that had once known companionship and purpose.

It stared up at me in silent accusation.

I swear that sock looked abandoned, betrayed, and slightly offended that the world would allow such indignity. A sock expects to age gracefully beside its partner. A sock expects to walk the same floors, brave the same boots, survive the same mud puddles, and at the end of life, retire together into the rag drawer. When a sock is denied this simple dignity, something inside it gives up hope.

I tried to explain this to myself calmly as I picked it up.

“Maybe the other one is stuck behind the drum. Things fall back there sometimes.”

So, I reached in. Felt around. Pulled out a receipt from 2018, a golf tee I do not own, and a dime that had rolled so far into retirement it had forgotten what daylight was. No sock.

“Maybe it’s in the hamper.”

I checked. Found a T-shirt I had sworn I lost in 2009. Found a towel stiff enough to be used as a roof shingle. Still no sock.

“Maybe,” I thought grimly, “the washer ate it.”

Because if you grew up in northeast Alabama, you know this much. The Lord gives many blessings, but one of His little jokes was creatin’ washing machines that hunger for cotton. They do not devour two socks in a pair. They only take the one you need most.

I pictured that missing sock floatin’ somewhere between here and Glory, caught in the spin cycle of eternity.

Now, this was not just any sock. It had belonged to my Uncle Pete. Uncle Pete was a man of few words and many stains. He believed in two things. First, that life was too short to match socks. Second, that any sock which remained unpaired for more than a week automatically reached “rag” status and should be used for polishing fishing lures or patchin’ leaks in the shed roof.

Trouble is, Uncle Pete passed on several years back.

So, this sock was my last tie to a man who once carried me on his shoulders across Terrapin Creek and told me that fish could smell fear, which is why he never caught any.

I sat down in the laundry room floor and looked at that sock. It was faded, frayed, and shaped like a question mark from too many spins in a dryer that had opinions about cotton. But it was one of the last relics of a man who never owned a pair of socks that matched, yet somehow walked confidently through the world as if he was dressed for the governor’s mansion.

I reckon I sat there longer than a reasonable man ought to, feelin’ a lump in my throat over hosiery. But grief sneaks up on you through the low doors sometimes. It doesn’t always arrive in church pews or at headstones. Sometimes it climbs out of a dryer with a quiet thump and waits for you to pick it up.

Finally, I folded that single sock tenderly and put it in the drawer beside its empty spot. A memorial of sorts. A tribute to the missing and misunderstood.

And wouldn’t you know it, two days later, the mate turned up in the yard, plastered against the chain-link fence like it had survived a tornado.

I washed them both, folded them together, and laid them in the drawer side by side.

But I still remember the tragedy of that lonely day.
A day that reminded me that grief does not always come dressed in black.
Sometimes it comes as a single, unmatched sock.
Soft.
Faded.
Still warm from the dryer.

*****

New Yesterdays can be found at: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.