The first time she said it, I thought she was just another old woman talking to ghosts.
“I just need to sit a while. Life’s a short ride, anyhow.”
She said it like a sigh, like it had been worn smooth from use. She said it like she meant it.
I’d been working the 6 a.m. shift at the old Pennsylvania station for eight years, sweeping cigarette butts that no one should still be smoking, printing out tickets for routes half the passengers forgot they bought. It wasn’t the kind of job folks dreamed of. But the steel mill closed, and the factory after that, and I had a daughter with crooked teeth and a rust-bucket Buick that drank more than I did in ‘84.
That bench by the tracks—it wasn’t even supposed to be there. Just an old wooden thing, cracked from sun and frost. But she sat there every Tuesday and Thursday, always in the same faded wool coat, the kind with the big buttons like chocolate cookies. Always with a white paper bag in her lap.
“Train 127 to Chicago still come through here?” she asked that first day, her voice like a wisp of woodsmoke in autumn.
“It doesn’t stop,” I told her. “Hasn’t in years. Just passes through.”
She nodded, like that was fine. Like the passing was enough.
And so she came. Week after week. Month after month.
I never asked her name. Seemed like asking might scare her away. And something about the way she sat—straight-backed, hands folded, eyes searching the silver blur of each train—it didn’t feel right to interrupt.
But one morning, when the snow stuck like flour to the rails, I brought her coffee.
“You always sit here,” I said, handing her the steaming cup.
“I do,” she answered, as if that explained everything.
“You waiting for someone?”
She didn’t answer right away. Just sipped.
“My boy used to take that train,” she said finally. “Before the war. I’d pack him a sandwich and an orange. He liked oranges even when they were expensive.”
She tapped the paper bag on her lap.
“I still pack it. Just in case.”
That was the only time she mentioned him by name—my boy. Not Jim, or David, or Michael. Just my boy. Like the name had been folded up with the flag they gave her and buried too deep to dig out.
He never came back, she said. Not in a box, not in a letter. Just vanished somewhere between the jungle and the politics.
“He wasn’t special,” she added. “Didn’t play football. Didn’t fix cars. Just liked to sit in the back of class and draw birds. Said he’d move to Chicago, work in advertising. Said they needed people who could make pigeons look like eagles.”
I laughed then, and she smiled, but it was the kind of smile that cracked at the edges.
That was 1991. Desert Storm was on the TVs in the waiting room, but she still watched the track like it was 1972.
Some folks called her crazy. Said she had dementia or was just lonely. But I don’t think she was crazy.
I think she just didn’t know how to stop loving.
We forget, these days, how much space love takes up. You lose someone, and the world doesn’t make room for the weight. They tell you to donate the clothes, delete the voicemails, get on with it. But what if you can’t get on? What if the only thing keeping you stitched together is a paper bag with a sandwich and a dream?
One day I sat beside her. It was spring, or trying to be. The kind of day when the wind still had teeth but the sun showed up anyhow.
“What’s in the bag?” I asked.
She smiled, real soft.
“Ham and Swiss. No mustard. He hated mustard.”
I don’t know why that hit me the way it did. Maybe because it was so… ordinary. No grand gesture. No shrine. Just a sandwich, packed with care, waiting on a boy who wasn’t coming.
That night, I went home and called my daughter. Left a message on her answering machine, the kind with the tiny cassette. Told her I was proud of her. Told her I missed her.
Didn’t say why. Didn’t say it was because of a woman who waited at a station for a train that never stopped.
The years folded in like they do. The kind of years that steal your knees and dim your eyes. I got promoted to station manager. Got a new badge. New responsibilities. Less time to sweep. More time to sit behind glass and pretend I was useful.
But every Tuesday and Thursday, I watched the bench.
Watched her coat thin.
Watched the bag sag.
Watched the way she leaned, just a little more each year, like the wind was finally winning.
Then one Thursday, she didn’t come.
I told myself it was the flu. Maybe she slipped on the walk. Maybe the mail was late. But she didn’t come Tuesday either.
The bench stayed empty.
I kept the coffee warm until 8:15. Just in case.
A week later, a man showed up. Late thirties. Nice coat, military haircut. He looked like someone who hadn’t been home in a long time.
“You the guy who works the booth?” he asked.
“Depends what you’re selling.”
He smiled.
“I’m not selling. I’m… looking. My aunt passed away last week. Found this photo in her Bible.”
He handed me a picture.
It was her. Sitting on the bench. Next to a boy in a camo jacket, maybe nineteen, sketchbook in his lap. They were both laughing. You could almost hear it.
“She used to tell stories about this place,” he said. “About how she came here to remember her son. My cousin. He disappeared in ’72. Laos, I think. MIA.”
I nodded.
“She never missed a day,” he said. “Even when her hip gave out.”
We stood in silence a while. Then he asked something I wasn’t ready for.
“Would you mind if I sat there?”
He pointed to the bench.
So he sat. Quietly. Like he was learning how to breathe a new kind of air.
Before he left, he placed something on the bench.
It was a sketchbook.
Not new. Not clean. The cover was worn, and inside were birds—pigeons, eagles, sparrows. One was mid-flight, wings stretched, as if it had just broken free.
“Found it in her attic,” he said. “Thought it belonged here.”
That was ten years ago.
The bench is still there. We had to replace the wood, but I kept one slat. It’s in my closet, under my winter boots.
Some mornings, I bring coffee and sit a spell. Just listen to the rails hum like they did back when people waited for letters and phones had cords. When someone you loved could disappear and all you had left was a sandwich with no mustard.
The world’s louder now. Faster. Everyone’s rushing to somewhere they’re not even sure they want to be.
But that bench?
That bench reminds me that waiting—really waiting—isn’t weakness. It’s devotion. The kind that doesn’t need recognition. The kind that shows up with a paper bag, year after year, just in case the train stops.
Because sometimes the point isn’t to move on.
Sometimes, the point is to stay.
To stay long enough for someone else to notice the quiet strength it takes to love someone who’s gone.
To stay long enough that the world can’t forget what it means to wait.
