It started like any other Tuesday.
The train station was half-empty, as usual. Just a few commuters scrolling their phones, a teenager with headphones too loud, and her.
An older woman, always dressed in lavender, always sitting on the far-left bench near Track 4. Neat gray curls. A small floral bag in her lap. And eyes that didn’t move—not even when trains came or went.
I was there every Tuesday too, grabbing my coffee before heading to work upstairs in the office tower. And I always saw her.
She never boarded. Never left. She just… waited.
People said she was senile. Others said she was waiting for someone who never showed. A few joked that maybe she didn’t even know why she was there anymore.
But one Tuesday, something different happened.
A little girl—maybe five—was walking hand-in-hand with her dad. She suddenly let go and walked straight over to the woman on the bench.
“Hi,” she said cheerfully. “Can I wait with you?”
The woman blinked. Then smiled softly and patted the empty spot beside her.
The girl climbed up, legs swinging. “Who are you waiting for?”
The woman didn’t answer right away.
Then she said, in a voice like a thread, “My daughter. She used to take the 9:05.”
The little girl nodded, serious. “Did she stop coming?”
The woman hesitated.
“She stopped needing trains,” she whispered. “But I still wait. Just in case.”
And something about that moment—her tone, her eyes—stopped everyone nearby. Even the coffee machine hissed a little quieter.
The little girl reached into her tiny backpack and pulled out a sticker—one of those sparkly rainbow ones.
She peeled it carefully and stuck it right on the woman’s bag.
“That way she can find you,” the girl said. “Even if she forgot her ticket.”
The woman’s hands trembled. She didn’t speak. Just nodded. Her eyes brimmed, but the tears didn’t fall. They didn’t need to.
The girl’s father came over, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry, she just—”
The woman raised a hand.
“She’s the first person to sit with me in nine years.”
They left after that. But the next Tuesday, the little girl came back.
And the one after that.
And eventually, more people started sitting beside the woman. Sharing coffee. Telling stories. Leaving flowers.
She never boarded a train. Never did leave.
But she started smiling more. Talking more.
Because someone finally saw her not as a ghost… but as a chapter worth reading.
💬 Closing Thought:
Grief doesn’t ask for answers.
It just asks not to be forgotten.
And sometimes, all it takes is one child to remind the world how to wait with someone who’s been waiting too long.
