The Tuesday Window
The Tuesday Window
There was a time in my life when Tuesdays meant everything.
After my mother passed away in 2003, the house felt like a museum—quiet, still, full of echoes. The kind of place where even the kettle seemed to sigh.
But every Tuesday, Josephine came.
She’d knock softly on the door, always at the same time. Not too early, not too late. I’d open the door and there she’d be—coat zipped high, a tote bag hanging off one shoulder, and a smile that carried more warmth than any heater in the house.
We didn’t plan grand things. She'd bring a newspaper or a DVD, sometimes just biscuits. We’d make tea and sit by the window, the one that caught the most sun. And we’d talk—or not. Sometimes silence was enough.
Josephine had her own sorrows. Her best friend, William, had just lost his father in a house fire. She was dividing her days between helping him in Bray and sitting with me in Dublin.
She never said it outright, but I knew. I wasn’t her burden—I was her balance.
Those Tuesdays became my lifeline. The only day I didn’t feel like I was living in ruins. And I think, in some way, they were hers too.
Years passed. Life pulled us in different directions. Clubs, obligations, distance. The Tuesdays faded.
But even now, I sometimes glance out that window around noon, half-expecting to see her silhouette, her bag, her smile.
And if I don’t, I still make tea.
Because love like that doesn’t leave. It just lives quietly in the light of a Tuesday window.
---
Spring came slowly the year the Tuesdays started slipping.
At first, it was just once. A phone call instead of a visit. William had a meeting in Bray—something about the house, or maybe the council. She sounded tired, her voice stretched thin. I told her it was fine. That I understood.
The next week, she came. But her eyes didn’t linger like they used to. She checked the time more than once. We still made tea. We still sat by the window. But the silence had changed. It wasn’t comfortable anymore—it felt like something was being packed away.
By summer, the Tuesdays had become uncertain things. Sometimes she came on a Wednesday. Sometimes not at all. And when she did, there was always news from the Special Olympics club—someone new had joined, someone needed help, someone was going to Limerick for trials.
I listened, smiled, nodded. But inside, I felt the shift. Not resentment—not quite. More like the quiet ache of something you know you’re losing, and have no power to stop.
One Tuesday, I waited longer than usual. Noon came and went. Then one. Then two. I made tea anyway, left her mug out beside mine. I even wiped the windowpane, like that would help her find her way.
She didn’t come.
That was the last real Tuesday.
Oh, there were other visits—scattered and brief. Dropping in on a Saturday, or a message now and then. But the rhythm was gone. The warmth of routine, the small ceremony of shared silence—it had slipped quietly out the door.
And yet, I never stopped calling it the Tuesday window. Never stopped glancing that way when the light came in soft and slanting.
Funny, isn’t it? How certain times and places keep carrying a person, long after the person has gone.
---
The years that followed were quieter, not in the peaceful way, but in the lonely one. The kind where a house doesn't echo so much as it hums with absence.
I still heard from her, now and then. A birthday card. A photo from an event, all medals and group smiles. She looked happy. Or at least she looked busy. Fulfilled, maybe. But it was hard to tell what was real and what was posed for others.
There were whispers, too. Mutual friends, bits of news passed along like half-broken shells. That the club took up most of her time now. That visits weren’t encouraged. That the fees had gone up, and she’d started skipping meals to cover them. I remember sitting with that last part like it was a stone in my throat.
I sent a parcel that December. A scarf, some biscuits, a card that just said “for the cold days.” No return letter. No thank-you. But I saw the scarf once, months later—in a blurry photo posted from some regional competition. She hadn’t forgotten. She just didn’t say.
And so the years stacked up, like books on a shelf you keep meaning to sort through.
There were no Tuesdays anymore. But I kept the routine in small ways. Always made two mugs of tea, always set the second one by the window. Sometimes I’d speak aloud, as if she were there. “They’re saying frost tonight.” Or “The daffodils are out early.” Nothing grand. Just the kind of words you save for someone who once made the silence feel kind.
Then came the pandemic. And with it, the long stillness.
I worried for her. For her hips, which had always given her trouble. For the surgeries I heard she went through, and the long rehabilitation left mostly in her own hands. The health system failed her, like it fails so many who are quiet and compliant and don’t complain loudly enough to be noticed.
That year, I sent two parcels.
One in spring. One in winter.
Both returned with no note.
But the second came back opened—resealed with tape, a corner of the biscuit box torn, as if someone had taken just one. I smiled at that. It was enough to keep me going.
And now, in 2025, I still send one each December. Same size, same contents. I don’t expect a reply. I don’t need one.
Because some loves don’t ask to be fed. They just ask to be kept alive.
And mine lives quietly—in a box by the window, in the way the light falls just so on a Tuesday, and in the warm memory of a knock at the door that changed everything.
---
It was a Tuesday, of course, when I saw her again.
Not in the way I'd imagined—not at the door, not with that bag over her shoulder, not stepping back into the rhythm we'd lost. It was by chance, at a community fair in a church hall two bus rides away from home. I hadn’t planned to go. I almost didn’t. But the day was too still, and something in the light said try.
She was at a stall selling homemade crafts—crocheted keyrings, decorated jars. Her hair was shorter now, streaked with grey. There was a badge pinned to her shirt with the club's logo, and she was laughing—genuinely, freely. It caught me off guard.
I didn’t approach her straight away. Just watched for a moment from the corner of the room. She hadn’t seen me. And part of me thought: Maybe that’s enough.
But then she turned, caught my eye—and for a second, time folded. I saw the same girl with the wet coat and the sunlit smile.
She didn’t say my name. Just stepped forward and touched my hand lightly, like she was checking if I was real. Her eyes were misted.
“I still think of the window,” she said.
And that was it. No long speech. No apologies. Just a shared truth, spoken quietly between two people who had once saved each other without ever calling it that.
We sat on a bench outside for a while. Talked about safe things. Weather. Health. A recipe she was trying. I didn’t ask why she stopped coming. She didn’t ask why I still sent packages. Some questions don’t need answering when the silence has already spoken for you.
As we parted, she pressed something into my hand—a tiny crocheted heart, pale blue, stitched with care. I keep it now on the windowsill, right where her mug used to go.
Tuesdays are quiet again.
But they don’t ache like they used to.
Because love, the kind that roots itself in tea and silence and showing up when it hurts—doesn’t need weekly visits to survive. It just needs a place to live.
And mine still lives, quietly, in the light of a Tuesday window.