I think the woman at the grocery store deli has been keeping me alive without knowing it

I’ve been sad lately, Not “today sucked” sad. Not “I’m having a bad week” sad, Just Fuck’n sad. The kind where you wake up and it’s already there waiting for you. And today? it was raining. Gray sky’s, wet streets, everything outside looking as miserable as I felt. I wasn’t exactly thinking about my mom ether, but I kind of was? That’s hard to explain. My mom died a long time ago. Sometimes grief isn’t actually a thought. It’s just something sitting beside you. You don’t have to look at it to know it’s there. Today got bad enough that I started thinking about giving up altogether, thinking what’s the point or “maybe death really is the answer” but Then I got hungry. I know weird thought process if I’m being honest, but I don’t have much money right now. there’s a grocery store near my apartment where you can get a deli sandwich for about nine bucks. I’ve been going there a lot lately. There’s a woman behind the deli counter who makes mine. Always the same order, Sourdough. This thing they call an “Italian blend” Capicola. Salami. Whatever other cured Italian meats a tony soprano would’ve gotten . Lettuce, tomato, onion, you know the works! And then there’s the important part. I ask her to smash it, I mean really smash the fuck’n thing. She puts the bread on top and presses the whole ridiculous pile down with her hands until it stops looking like something constructed by shaggy and Scooby Do. I don’t know exactly when this started happening, but somewhere along the way I realized I wasn’t going there because I wanted a sandwich anymore. I was going because I wanted her to make it. If I walk in and don’t see her behind the counter, sometimes I don’t order anything. I know how that sounds. But something about this woman making me food makes things feel okay for a little while. Today she finally recognized me. We started talking while she made my usual. She mentioned that she was worried about her son because it was raining and she’d sent him to school wearing shorts, Nothing profound Just normal mom stuff. The ordinary kind of worrying mothers probably do a thousand times without realizing anybody else is listening. I told her something I’d never told her before. I said her sandwiches make me feel better. I even admitted that when she’s not working, I usually don’t get one at first she laughed then She told me “It’s the mom’s touch.” And that fucking wrecked me. Because I think she’s right. All these trips to the deli counter, all these stupid smashed sandwiches, and somehow I never put it together. My mom can’t make me a sandwich anymore. And God, I wish she could. I don’t even need some perfect sandwich recreated exactly the way I remember it, She could use the wrong bread. She could drown the thing in mustard. Completely fuck it up. I’d eat every bite. Because I don’t think your mom making you a sandwich is really about food. It’s knowing somebody noticed you were hungry. It’s somebody making something with you specifically in mind. It’s somebody putting food into your hands because they want you to keep existing they love you. Maybe that’s what I’ve actually been buying for nine dollars. For a few minutes at a grocery store deli counter, somebody’s mom takes care of me. She doesn’t know that’s happening, Until today, I don’t think I knew either. I walked back to my apartment sat down afterward with this flattened monstrosity of meat, vegetables and sourdough and thought about my mom. And I realized this woman somehow makes me miss her more while also making me feel closer to her? I don’t know how both things can be true. They just are. Part of me wants to tell this woman everything. I want to explain that lately there have been days where I’m hanging on by threads, and somehow one of those threads has become a sandwich made by a woman who worries about whether her son is cold at school. But that’s a hell of a thing to put on somebody who’s just trying to work her shift. So I probably won’t. Maybe one day I’ll just tell her that my mom died and that there’s something about the way she makes my sandwich that reminds me of being taken care of. I think that might be enough. I don’t really know why I’m posting this. I don’t have some profound lesson to wrap it up with. I just know that this morning I was sitting in a dark place wondering how much more I had in me. Then I walked through the rain and got a sandwich. A woman made it exactly how I like it. She smashed the absolute shit out of it And I ate. Sometimes I guess staying alive isn’t some heroic decision you make once. Sometimes you’re broke. It’s raining. You miss your mom. Somebody makes you a sandwich. And for today, that’s enough.