For as long as I can remember, my house has always been clean.  Always.
And you may think that I mean clean, as in tidy, but I mean clean as clean.  So clean you could run your finger over the mantle without picking up any dust.  So clean you could eat off of the toilet seat. Our house was just clean.
You see, my dad was a full time engineer.  And my sister and I were at school most of the day.  So that left my mother, who didn’t work and didn’t do much outside of the house, with several hours on her hands each and every day. So each and every day, she would clean. 
Hence, our house was very clean.
I can remember very clearly one Saturday morning, I woke to the smell of pancakes.  We never ate pancakes. Too messy.  My sister, still sporting her pajamas and clutching her beloved teddy to her side, emerged from her room the moment I did from mine.  We both gave each other a curious glance as we descended the stair case. 
There in the kitchen stood my mother and father.  Dad was hunched over the stove, flipping pancakes like a pro, and Mom was hunched over the counter slicing strawberries and bananas to fill the fruit bowl. 
“Morning girls!”  Dad yelled from the stove as he flipped the last pancake onto a platter stacked high with them. “Sit, sit, sit.  It’s chow time!”  He hurriedly ushered my sister and I to the table with the pancakes in hand.  Mom followed right behind with milk and fruit.  Then they both sat with us and after prayer, we began to eat. 
The dishes were left in the sink and on the stove top.  Dirty.  Mom never left anything dirty out for more than ten minutes.  She always cleaned the dishes before dinner began to ensure the house was still clean.
That’s when I knew something was terribly wrong. 
My sister didn’t get it.  They told us Mom was sick with some disease that had a lot of letters, but that the chances of her getting better were slim to none.  “What’s slim to none mean?”  She had asked, but Dad just smiled and collected the dishes, placing them in the sink. Unwashed. 
That night after Mom and Dad tucked me in, I stayed awake for a long time.  After I thought everyone else had finally dozed off, I crept back downstairs.  The dished from that morning will still sitting in the sink.  They were sticky and covered in syrup.  Mom hadn’t even thought to wash them.  So I rolled up my sleeves and did just that, silent tears streaming down my face the entire time. 
No one spoke of the dishes, but I know they must have thought about it because from then on, our house started to lose its cleanliness.  Mom had a lot of appointments and more often than not she would come home from them weak and tired. It started with a few piles of clothing haphazardly thrown out of the dryer, never folded, but then it evolved into disorder in every room.  Mom never said a word though. 
One day, I came home from school to find Mom folding laundry.  She said she was feeling much better, so that night we began the project of cleaning the house.  Me and Mom.  It was nice to work together.  To be together. To have Mom back.  She loved to clean.  She taught me little tricks of how to keep dust away longer and how to remove impossible looking stains.  Little by little the house came back into order. 
We had one room to go.  My sister and I came home and found Mom passed out on the floor.  We got her to the hospital right away.  The doctors whispered something to Dad.  I had never seen him cry before, but as he sat there talking to Mom he was letting the tears fall unashamedly. 
Dad came and got my sister.  She squeezed my hand tightly before she walked into to Mom’s hospital room.  I could hear her sobbing, the words barely understandable.  Mom hushed her and then spoke to her in a quiet, reassuring voice.  When my sister came to tell me it was my turn she was crying so hard I thought for sure Mom was already gone.
Thankfully, she wasn’t though.  Mom looked at me when I crossed the threshold.  I looked back.  She looked like Mom, just a little tired and gray.  Mom all the same though.  I approached her bed timidly.  We had been in the hospital plenty of times before, but never like this. 
“I need you to listen to me,” Mom whispered as she grabbed my hand.  “I need you to finish what we started.  You have to finish cleaning the house.”  She leaned closer.  “Promise me you’ll do it.”  I nodded and gripped her hand more tightly, but her hold loosen and her face went slack.  She was gone.
We got home a while later.  Dad retreated to his and Mom’s room after he had check on my sister and I several times.  My sister locked herself in the bathroom with a box of tissues.  I went immediately to the last unclean room in the house.  The kitchen.  The place where it all began.  With the memories fresh on my mind, I began to clean. 
Occasionally, I would find something and begin to ask Mom about it, but then I remembered she wasn’t there.  I cleaned for hours, late into the night.  Dusting, mopping, sorting, organizing, until it was all clean at last.  I stepped back and smiled.
I walked through every room of our house.  Remembering the laughter shared with Mom, the silly moments that had taken place in each hallway, in each corner.  Remembering the good and the bad.  Remembering Mom. 
I ended at the sink in the kitchen.  Standing over it, I finally gave into the tears.  But they were not tears of sorrow, yet tears of joy.  The house was clean.  And not just tidy clean, but clean clean, just as it had always been when Mom was alive and just as she would have wanted it to be.