There was an old woman on my street who had no where to go and no food. No one helped her. Every day for four years, I brought her meals. People who lived next door would stare at me. She died yesterday. I froze when I got a call from a number I didn’t know. I would never have guessed who this old lady was.
I saw her for the first time in the winter of 2021. I had recently moved to a little town outside of Portland to a quiet cul-de-sac. I rented a little one-bedroom apartment after my divorce to start anew. Most people around here stayed to themselves. You waved, they nodded, and that was it.
But I constantly saw her as I walked by this old, falling-down house. She was small, hunched over, and usually wore a thin shawl, even in the summer. Sometimes she would sit on the porch and look off into space. There were times when she wasn’t there at all.
It seemed like no one saw her. Like she wasn’t there.
One afternoon, I brought her a bag of food. I had some extra stuff, like eggs, bananas, and chicken that I had already cooked. When I offered her a bar of gold, she blinked at me like I had just handed her one.
She said her name was Mrs. Genara. That’s all. No first name. I asked her if she needed anything else. She shook her head, but she hugged the bag close to her chest like it was really important.
That was our thing.
Every day after work, I would bring her something. Things are sometimes left over. The Filipino deli next to my office sells soup that I sometimes buy. She never asked for anything specific. She never let me in. We always spoke on the porch.
She would tell me little things like how her knees hurt more when it rained, how she used to love music, and that she had been to Spain but couldn’t remember when. It was like she was used to walking in fog because her memory was so clear.
People next door thought I was weird.
As I walked back to my car, I could hear people talking behind my back. “Is that his cousin?” “What does he get out of it?” “That house isn’t safe.”
No one else came close to her residence. I saw the HOA guy take pictures of her yard and then leave without saying anything.
I asked a few other people, but no one really knew who she was. She had lived there “forever,” her husband had died “ages ago,” and she “wasn’t all there anymore.” People felt she was hopeless.
But I was there every day for four years.
I was still there even when I was having money problems. I was still there even after I got COVID. I had to walk three blocks with heated soup containers covered in towels because my car broke down. I don’t know why. It just felt right.
There was an ambulance parked out front when I got to her porch yesterday morning.
A young paramedic came down the steps. I paused. He shook his head and glanced at me.
She had died in her sleep.
I stood there with the soup in my hand and couldn’t do anything. I don’t know how long I stayed there, but I finally left the box on the doorstep and walked home.
That night, I got a call from a number I didn’t know.
The person on the other end spoke clearly and professionally. He told me he was a lawyer and needed to talk to me about Mrs. L. Genara’s money.
I informed him he was talking to the wrong person. She lived next door to me. I never even went inside her house, though.
He said no, but I was the ideal person for him to talk to.
The world altered at that time.
People found out that Mrs. Genara was not poor at all.
She didn’t sleep on the street. She wasn’t broke. People didn’t forget about her.
She used to be a pianist who went on tour throughout Europe and Asia under a fake name. In the 1960s, she was a kid prodigy. Her husband, who passed away, was an artist who showed his work at minor museums. They had built a quiet fortune together—nothing flashy, but powerful.
She had pulled back after he died. No kids. No family close by. The house, the paintings, and the memories are all that are left. At first, dementia came on slowly, but then it hit all at once. No one came looking for her when she stopped checking her email or her account.
Not me.
The lawyer stated she had been keeping an eye on me for years. Writing small comments about me in her journals. Mom forgot my name on several days. She called me “the kind one” on some days. But I was always there, and that was important.
She gave me her home.
She provided me more than simply the house. She gave me the whole land as a gift. Her music collection. A few paintings that her husband did. He read me a handwritten note out loud, and his voice shook a little toward the end.
The letter said:
“To the one who remembered I was there—you gave me back my dignity without asking for anything in return.”
The only thing I can do in this world is say thank you in the greatest way I know how.
Please look out for yourself. This site should remind you that being nice is better than being quiet.
I felt completely broken when I was in that lawyer’s office.
I hadn’t done anything strange. I had just made sure she wasn’t hungry. I talked to her. Made her feel like she mattered.
I didn’t sure what to do with the house at first. It needs a lot of work done to it. The ceiling was sagging, the pipes were old, and the floorboards creaked in a way that made me feel insecure. I wanted to sell it, collect the money, and start over.
But I went through it nonetheless. There were parts of her history everywhere. A lot of music sheets. Scarves that are old. Photos of cities she could scarcely remember seeing. I saw a framed newspaper story on her performance at the Teatro Real in Madrid. She was just 19.
I couldn’t let it go.
So I started to clean it up.
She left a tiny amount of money in another account, but it was enough to pay for repairs. I didn’t touch the art or the recordings. I made the living room the way she wanted it. I even kept the wind chimes on the porch, even though they didn’t make any noise anymore.
People in the area heard about it.
People who used to not care about things started to ask inquiries.
“Did she really leave you all that?”
“Do you live there now?”
“What are you going to do with it?”
I shrugged. I told them that I still didn’t get what was going on.
I put up a folding sign on the porch one afternoon, around six months after Mom died:
FREE COFFEE AND PIANO TIME FOR EVERYONE
That first Saturday, three kids came.
Then an old man said he hadn’t played since college. She cried as she played the keys again. She used to be a music teacher. People brought food that was baked. A person gave us a bunch of books.
Every Saturday, people arrive and depart. They talk, play, and listen. Some others just sit on the porch with a cup of coffee and let the chimes catch any breeze that comes by.
The piano in Mrs. Genara’s house is the most important thing.
I never told anyone about it. I never posted anything on the internet. But people kept arriving. Maybe people are talking about it. Or something else.
One day, a woman named Araceli came by. Araceli is in her mid-thirties, has curly hair, and a lot of questions. She added that her dad used to hang out with Genara at a jazz bar in the city center in the 1970s. She showed me a picture of them both smiling while sitting on a piano bench.
She said she would help me find a safe place to keep some of the music sheets and tapes. We spent hours rummaging through boxes. Talking. Laughter. We cry every now and then.
Since then, we’ve been going out.
Life is strange.
I believed I was helping her all those years. I thought I was the one who helped and offered. But it turns out that I was the one who was saved.
She made me want to live. A second chance. A place to call home.
And somehow, she broke through the wall I had erected around myself after the divorce. For a long time, I thought I didn’t have anything to give anyone. But that old woman reminded me that just being there can change everything.
Don’t wait for permission to care if you witness someone being ignored, forgotten, or left behind.
Just do it.
You don’t know who they used to be.
You don’t know who they are now.
And years later, you can be sitting on a porch with a full heart, wondering how you ever lived without them.
Please share this if it touched you in any way. You never know who might need to be reminded. ❤️