Today someone repeated the same snide remark, that thinlipped smile and the tone that mixes condescension with contempt: Youre just cleaning up after other peoples lives.
It isnt the first time Ive heard it, and I doubt it will be the last. Before I would simply look away, keep my head down, because I saw no point in arguing. This time, however, I decided not to stay silent.
Yes, I clean. But those who fling the word around with ridicule only see the surface. They dont grasp what lies beneath, because my work is far more than merely cleaning.
I handle the frailty of old age with a tenderness reserved for something fragile and defenseless. I feed those who can no longer lift a spoon, untangle tangled hair, trim nails, and help them into their clothes. Sometimes I just sit beside them, in quiet, when the pain they feel is not in the body but in the soul. I listen to stories that no one else seems interested in, yet for them those tales are an entire world, memories that warm the last years of their lives.
I look after people who once raised families, taught schoolchildren, built houses, tended patients, taught apprentices and now they themselves need support. In these daily, routine acts there is no humiliation, only dignity. Not weakness, but honour.
This isnt menial work. Its about humanity. About patience, about love, about the ability to remain a decent person when others turn their backs. When a person is powerless and wholly dependent on another, true kindness is put to the test.
So when the comment is made with scorn, I think: they simply havent stood in the place of those who need help. They believe strength is measured in pounds, in a fancy title, in a corner office. It isnt. Real strength is staying human beside someones vulnerability, not walking away, not looking down, not diminishing them.
I could never thrive in a job that demands pretense, flattery, or deceit for personal gain. Yet it is often those very occupations that earn respect, while our work is undervalued, as if we were somehow beneath everyone else.
I know that isnt true. In our quiet there is dignity. In our hands there is warmth that returns a sense of self to the person we care for. In our work there is a heart that never tires of compassion.
One day the people who sneer will find themselves unable to lift a finger on their own. Perhaps then they will see that my job is not about washing bodies. It is about restoring humanity, about a touch that heals, about a heat that reminds someone: you are still alive, you matter, you have not been forgotten.
Yes, I look after other peoples loved ones. I do it with respect, with tenderness, with pride. And maybe someday that will be me. Or them. And I hope that, when that time comes, there will be someone beside them who does the same with love, without contempt, without fear, simply as a fellow human being.
