I’m 36, a single father raising my 12-year-old son, Nick, in a small ninth-floor apartment that’s felt emptier since his mother passed away three years ago. Life is quiet, routine, and sometimes heavy. Next door lives Mrs. Lawrence, an elderly woman in a wheelchair who became part of our lives without either of us realizing when it happened. She helped Nick with homework, corrected his grammar with gentle humor, and made sure he never felt alone when I worked late. Over time, she stopped being “the neighbor” and became family — someone who filled the spaces grief had left behind.
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