What began as another cleaning job quickly became the one appointment I knew I could count on every single week.
Every Thursday.
Same time.
Same house.
For eight years.
Then, a few weeks ago, Mrs.
Whitaker told me she was moving away to live closer to her daughter.
“I’m tired of having an entire upstairs I never even use,” she joked.
I laughed with her.
But when the day came to clean her house for the final time, it affected me more than I expected.
The rooms looked strangely empty.
There were pale rectangles on the walls where family photographs had hung for years.
The calendar that had always been beside the refrigerator was gone.
Half the cabinets were empty.
I kept reaching toward familiar objects before remembering they’d already been packed.
