There are people who quietly become family.
Not because you are related. Because somewhere along the way you stop keeping score of whose life belongs to whom.
Rosa and her husband, Pasquale, came into my life when they needed support. What I was not expecting was how much they would support me.
People often ask what a personal support worker does.
We help people stay safe. We help them stay comfortable.
But if I am honest, the real work is protecting ordinary life.
A walk around the block.
Repotting a poinsettia at the kitchen table.
Coffee in your favourite mug.
Looking at family photographs that have hung on the same wall for forty years.
I am proud of the work I did to help keep them in their home for that last year. Not because the work was heroic. Because home held the evidence of their lives.
The chairs people had sat in for decades. The family photographs. The familiar drawers. The table where potting soil could be spilled because a plant still needed room to grow.
Pasquale died two years ago. I was able to be part of his death story.
There is more to say about that. There will always be more to say.
For now, I want to remember this:
They were not simply people I cared for.
They were people who changed me.
Thank you for spending a little time with Rosa and Pasquale.