I helped my elderly neighbor through the last years of her life and made sure she never felt alone. So when the police showed up at my door the morning after her funeral, I never imagined I would be the one treated like a criminal.
My name is Claire. I’m 30, and I live alone in a small house with a narrow porch and a mailbox that leans a little to the left.
Three years ago, I noticed my elderly neighbor’s mail piling up in her mailbox.
It sat there for days. Unopened bills. Catalogs.
Letters.
I walked past it every morning on my way to work, and every evening it bothered me a little more. Finally, one evening, I knocked on her door.
An elderly woman answered slowly, wrapped in a cardigan despite the warm weather. She looked embarrassed more than frail.
“I’m sorry to bother you.
I’m Claire. I live next door. I noticed your mail…”
“Oh.” She looked down.
“It’s just been overwhelming lately.”
“Would you like me to help you sort through it?”
She hesitated. Then she stepped aside. “That would be kind of you, dear.”
That evening changed both our lives.
Her name was Mrs.
Whitmore. She was 82 and lived alone with her ginger cat, Pumpkin.
Sorting mail together became the beginning of everything.
I started stopping by after work. Picking up her medication.
Bringing her groceries. Fixing small things around the house.
I learned that she liked her tea steeped for exactly four minutes. That she never missed her favorite television show.
We’d sit on her porch in the evenings.
Drink tea from chipped cups. Talk about everything and nothing.
She told me stories about her late husband and the three children they raised, and about a life she said had been good to her. I didn’t talk much about my own past.
She was standing in my kitchen one afternoon, helping me fix a pie recipe, when her eyes drifted to the child’s drawing still hanging on my refrigerator.
The one I couldn’t bring myself to take down.
It was the last thing my daughter made before illness took her from me, and not long after, my husband and I lost each other too.
Mrs. Whitmore never questioned me. We filled each other’s silence.
***
For the first time in years, I didn’t feel so alone.
Mrs.
Whitmore told me she had three children: two daughters and a son.
They lived in another state and rarely visited. When they did come, their visits were loud and impatient.
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