I’m Esther. I’m 72 years old, and I’ve been waitressing at the same little diner in small-town Texas for more than twenty years.

I’m Esther. I’m 72 years old, and I’ve been waitressing at the same little diner in small-town Texas for more than twenty years. Most folks are kind. Some are rushed. A few are cranky before they’ve had their coffee. But nearly everyone treats me with basic decency.

Last Friday, one woman decided she didn’t have to.

I’ve still got the hustle of a teenager when I’m on the floor. I’m not the fastest anymore, but I don’t forget orders, I don’t spill drinks, and I treat every customer like they’re sitting at my own kitchen table. That’s how I was raised. That’s how I’ve always done the job.

I never planned on staying at this diner so long. I took the job after my husband, Joe, passed away, just to get myself out of the house. I thought a few months would do it. Maybe a year. But the place got into my bones. The routine. The regulars. The feeling of being needed.

It’s also where I met Joe. He came in one rainy afternoon in 1981, soaked to the skin, and asked if we had coffee strong enough to wake the dead. I told him we had coffee strong enough to raise them. He laughed so hard he came back the next day. And the next. Six months later, we were married.

So when Joe passed, this place became my anchor. Sometimes I swear I still feel him sitting at table seven, watching me work, smiling like he always did.

Last Friday was a busy lunch rush. Every booth was full. The kitchen was slammed. I was moving steady, tray in hand, when a young woman walked in already filming herself on her phone like the rest of us were background scenery.

She sat in my section.