When we were younger, Xavier would often help us clean up our room and things because we would find it extremely overwhelming due to the sheer amount of crap we had (and frankly didn’t need or want in hindsight) and the fact that we would forget where we put the shit we did want five minutes later.

So he’d have us make up our bed and use it as a staging area, gently but firmly guiding us through sorting our things into piles of shit to throw away, shit to file in certain cabinets, and generally keeping us on task as a body double. It was much easier to clean that way.

He wouldn’t yell, he’d crack jokes and tell stories, he was a great person to clean with. He himself was neurodivergent to shit and his office was quite often a wreck, but the man was a goddamned genius and he was one of the only people who could motivate me in particular calmly.

Memories of cleaning with him are some of the only fond memories of doing chores we have. Most of the rest are very traumatic and unpleasant.

I got to thinking about cleaning with him because I just dumped my afternoon dose of meds out on my bed to see what I was doing better, using the bed as a staging area like he used to do with me..

I miss him.

-Allēna